65-Plus Valued At The Workplace: Productive Activity Need Not Cease When The Self-Styled Retirement Years Arrive

Even though she celebrated her hundredth birthday earlier this year, Rosa Finnegan continues to work at a needle factory in a Boston suburb, helping to make and pack stainless steel needles.

She does not consider herself different from the other younger workers, she hitches rides from them, jokes and mixes with them and works as hard as any one of them. She still has willing and dexterous hands and has absolutely no desire or intention of calling it quits.

She is also living testimony that industriousness and productive activity need not cease when the self-styled retirement years arrive.

“I’d rather be here than almost anywhere,” she says. “You feel like you’re still a worthwhile person, even though you’re old — (you’re) not sitting in a rocking chair.”

More important than her astonishing enthusiasm is that she has actually found an employer who is willing to respect her commitment, values her presence and allows her to keep on working, without replacing her with young more energetic hands.

When Rosa reached 100, Fred Hartman, chief executive of the Vita Needle Company, cut a cake during morning break and then let her continue with her designated duties.

Older workers bring in a lot of value to the workplace. The owners at Vita acknowledge that their continued existence is in part because of its older workers. The average age of its 48 employees is 73. The owners say that apart from the years of experience they bring to their jobs, they are both dependable and trustworthy. They are low-cost and not very demanding.

Continued working means less staff turnover, which in turn means that staff development and orientation programs are not required. Moreover, their years of experience lead to better and more qualitative products.

The acceptance and worth of the older worker and the value they bring to the workplace has raised concern that they leave little opportunity for the younger workers to be hired.

The elderly however, contend that it is wrong to assume that they are occupying place that rightly should belong to the younger generation. They argue that just because they have reached a certain age does not mean that their employability becomes a drawback, an inconvenience, something that can be dispensed with.

Another reason why this trend is picking up is that modern medicine has expanded life-spans and the elderly are less inclined towards leisure and retirement, but are keen to contribute as long as they can.

Moreover, the current gloomy economy has made financial security an imperative and reduced retirement as an option. To be able to add to the family’s purse, the gray workforce, if they cannot find full time employment is finding seasonal work or part-time employment.

There is a high demand for skilled professional in healthcare and they prefer not to let go off their experienced workers, especially nurses. Barbara Genzler is a 67-year old registered nurse, who works in the surgery department and has no plans of retiring. She says her motivation is her love for her work and says inspite of it being hectic and hard she does not get tired easily.

“I can easily see spending my 70s working here,” she says. “There’s a lot of longevity in our department.”

One of her colleagues at the Scripps Health is Kenneth Curzon, who will be 90 in a couple of months. She manages parking operations at the hospital.

“It gives me a lot of satisfaction coming here each day, knowing I’m doing something other than sitting in a corner dreaming about things that happened years ago,” says Curzon. “I have a lot of friends here.”

Bill Ferson enjoys working at the Vita Needle factory. The elderly worker stunned a visitor telling him “I’m 39 years old.” Seeing the raised eyebrows, the 93-year old quickly added, “Just reverse the order.”