THE REFUSAL of a request from celebrated historian Professor Sheila Rowbotham to be allowed to work part-time after 65 has sparked protests at Manchester University, where she lectures, and beyond.

As the university comes under pressure to review its decision, Rowbotham said that she was more disappointed than outraged when informed she would not be allowed to work past retirement age.

She can see the irony in the fact that it is her young students who are protesting at what they see as an injustice. They have set up a Save Sheila Rowbotham page on Facebook and it has already attracted several hundred signatures.

But why would a woman who has spent her life studying discrimination against women not be immediately galvanised by this age discrimination?

“Things have been bleak at Manchester for a while,” said Rowbotham, referring to the university’s financial difficulties. “And, also, I was brought up to accept that people just retire at 65. My students told me my attitude was defeatist.”

Since the introduction of age discrimination laws more than a year ago, there has been much debate on whether people should work past the mandatory retirement age (MRA).

Rowbotham said: “I don’t have a very big pension and I thought it would be better to work part-time for another three years. I felt I could still do a third of my job for a third of my salary perfectly competently. I didn’t think I was asking a lot. After all, there is so much rhetoric about people continuing to work longer.”

Indeed there is. The government, in the face of a demo-graphic time bomb and skills shortages, is keen for us to work beyond 65 and has been preparing to raise the age at which we can collect the state pension. Its new laws banned age discrimination in the workplace and yet allowed businesses to retain the default retirement age of 65 if they wished. Most of them did.

An employee can now ask to work beyond 65, but if an employer rejects the request, it does not have to give a reason, in marked contrast to requests for flexible working. The message seems to be that we need to work longer – but that we do not have the right to do so.

If there is one place you would expect the wisdom of accumulated years to be appreciated and mandatory retirement ages to be swept away, it is in our colleges and universities.

Tesco’s diversity manager, Sharon Kyle, said she was surprised that academia, along with banking and law, seem the most resistant to relaxing or abandoning mandatory retirement ages. “It’s puzzling. You might expect most resistance to be in retail and manual work, where there might be concerns about staff having the physical ability to keep doing a job,” she said.

Tesco has offered its staff the chance to work beyond 65 on both moral and business grounds, and other retailers, including Marks & Spencer and Asda, have also relaxed or ditched the mandatory retirement age.

Roger Kline, head of equality and employment rights at the University and College Union (UCU), said UCU was challenging the retirement of 10 university staff, including Rowbotham.

Kline said the UCU was not arguing that everyone should have the right to stay on, but that, where it is financially possible and staff are still useful, there should be that opportunity. He said it is bizarre for institutions to operate a blanket “no” policy. “Stephen Hawkins is 66,” he said. “Can you imagine what would happen if Cambridge University said to him, okay old chap, it’s time to stop looking for the origins of the universe?”

Many organisations, including universities, tightened up on their MRAs or introduced them in advance of the new age discrimination legislation. Their lawyers advised them that they might be sued by older workers not allowed to work on.

The 10 UCU cases are in the tribunal process with a queue of other MRA challenges. Their outcome could depend on the verdict in a test case (the Heyday case) in the European courts, where it is being argued that the government’s decision to allow companies to retain MRAs contradicts the spirit of the European directive on age discrimination. A decision is not expected until at least the end of this year.

The business world is fearful of what might happen if MRA is made illegal. “I don’t want some demotivated 68-year-old hanging on just to use the private healthcare scheme,” said one manager.

Rachel Krys, director of the Employers Forum on Age (EFA), said some companies feared that older workers would push up their costs. “We spoke to an employer who kept a receptionist on after 65 and after a year her private health bill was £15,000 – more than her salary,” said Krys. “But the fact is not many employers offer those sorts of benefits,” she added.

Krys accepts that without a retirement age it is harder to work out group risk on benefits such as private medical insurance. There are two basic solutions if benefits costs soar: a selective provision of benefits or a reduction of the benefits offered to all members of staff.

“We are starting to see just the beginnings of a trend in reducing benefits to all staff,” said Krys. She said that business opposition to abandoning the MRA is partly due to financial and practical concerns and partly to prejudice. Within the EFA, only 10%-20% of members have abandoned or relaxed the MRA.

Krys said there is no certainty that the Heyday test case will succeed and that it has “muddied the waters”. The EFA would like to see the government set a date for the removal of MRA.

Rowbotham will battle on despite her initial acceptance of her fate: “I will pursue the issue now because I feel I would be letting people down if I didn’t.”

Andrew Mullen head of faculty human resources for the School of Humanities at Manchester, said that each request to continue working was now decided on its own merits. He could make no comment on Rowbotham’s case.

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