Many Shropshire workers are hoping for a happier new year, after finding themselves out of work in the run-up to Christmas, writes Ben Bentley.
But when you’re pushing 60 years old and the nation is in recession, is there anything out there for you?
All his working life, 56-year-old Terence Cotterill has been a grafter, laying floors for the last 40 years.
Today, standing outside the Job Centre in Telford town centre, he is among Britain’s rising toll of jobless, having been laid off two months ago.
“This is the first time I’ve been out of work in my life and it’s terrible,” says Terence, his job seekers book in hand, having just signed on and scoured the vacancies at the Job Centre to no avail.
“I feel you get treated like rubbish - all they want to do is get you back into work but if there are no jobs out there. . . I cannot do anything else.
“I’ve got a family and I’m nearly 60 and employers don’t want to know.”
Ah, that age old age question: despite legislation introduced to eliminate discrimination on the basis of age, it appears there are employers out there craftily working around it. They have, after all at the moment, got the pick of whoever they like - there’s plenty of other grafters out there desperate for work.
Terence describes how a friend of a similar age is in the same boat. It seems everyone knows someone who is recently out of a job.
Everyday there are new reports of more job cuts and companies going to the wall. Among the latest are high street stalwarts Woolworths and MFI , who have both gone belly up.
“I didn’t realise how bad it was,” says Terence. “I went into the barbers and it was empty. The barber said it was normally busy on a Friday morning but he’d got nobody in and he’d got two barbers there he was paying them to do nothing.
“It’s the knock-on effect of it - shop workers, painters, plumbers - it’s affecting a lot of areas, even schools.”
Terence describes how he recently had to find £30 to pay in one week to pay for school trips and tickets for a school play, and says people can no longer afford to cough up.
According to government figures, the number of people unemployed is 1.82 million - the highest it’s been in more than 10 years. Last month saw one of the sharpest rises in Shropshire dole queues for some time.
If things carry on the way they are - and unemployment is predicted to hit three million by 2010 - many more of us are likely to end up where Terence has ended up: at the Job Centre.
This Christmas has been a tough one, not just for people like Terence but for everyone who’s not got a job. And even for many who have.
But he says you just have to cut your cloth to suit your circumstances. Life goes on.
You see, Terence is nothing if not an optimist, saying: “Where there’s a will there’s a way. I feel it will pick up again, I’m not a negative person.”
And he says that people should not be frightened or humiliated by the prospect of a trip to the Job Centre. After the initial shock of finding himself out of work for the first time in his working life, Terence has a more measured perspective of the circumstances he has found himself in through no fault of his own.
He’s even upbeat about going to the Job Centre.
“The people at the Job Centre are helpful - they do try and do things for you,” he continues.
“But I remember the first week I signed on and I lost my rag, because I could not accept it, it was a new thing as it will be to a lot of people.
“If you are a grafter and you have never been here before you think ‘Why am I being treated like this?’
“It was a big shock, it was the first time I’d been there in 40 years.”
So for anyone finding themselves in the similar position of being unemployed at the start of the new year, take heart from the upside to Terence’s story. He says it’s doing him some good, that in an odd way he’s a lot more relaxed about his future and doesn’t worry so much.
He’s looking for work in his trade of floor laying, but is now considering other options. He fancies himself as a driver and has been looking at vacancies across other fields.
Indeed, a chatty chap with a bright outlook and keen to offer other people a word of advice when it comes to searching for a job, Terence could do worse than taking a post here at the Job Centre.
Because one irony of a rising number of British workers on the dole is that Job Centres are now so busy they are recruiting 6,000 new staff - one of the only operations nationally taking people on.
Terence has already heard this news. He gets on with people and reckons it could be an opportunity. His eagerness to return to work is reminiscent, but by no means threatening, of perhaps the most famous unemployed character ever to have appeared on television.
Anyone remember Boys From the Blackstuff’s Yosser Hughes and his catchphrase “Gizza job?”
Says Terence: “I said to one of the staff, ‘I could do your job’ and the lady said it’s going to be one of the sought-after jobs because they are the ones who are helping other people get back into work.
“I would give it a go.”
15 Comments
I thought that legislation was in place making “ageism” illegal?
If there is ONE thing that should be stamped on firmly for a reason to “exclude” someone from a potential job , it is AGE.
Above all else , it is the one thing that “changes” for all of us, but paradoxically, is the ONE thing none of us can do ANYTHING about. - We are all heading for the same place - at the same rate, and that place is old(er) age !
And anyway - people in Terences’ age group are far more likely to make better employees.
As a self employed person for the last 6 years I have lived daily with the thought that:
“Have I got a “job” (business) next week, next month, and so on …
(just like being permanently umemployed really !!)
…..And this is where I can sympathise with Terence - What a shock to the system it must be for him and countless oythers, after 40 years of having a weekly / monthly wage - to suddenly find it’s ALL gone.
All of a sudden….. “YOU” are faced with having to find your OWN way - and that’s the feeling that every business owner has every day/week/month - there is never a let up.
To Terence I would say:
Never give up - but don’t rely on the job centre alone.
Why or how, should those job centre guys “behind the desk” -
(who may well NEVER have experienced what it’s like to be “on your own” - without a job -having to make your own decisions all of a sudden)
- help YOU? …. WHY should YOU get that job rather than the next person? …
In the end… it’s down to you.
Actually Terence, you aren’t on your own…
I and countless other “business owners / self employed” people actually do just the same as you every day - that is: lookng for a “job”, EXCEPT that in our case, the word isn’t “JOB”, it’s “CUSTOMER” , or as some people call it..
… “Marketing” - just the same process really as you writing a CV !
Good luck on finding a new job!
Regards
Askeric dotcom
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I am out of work ‘because’ I worked for the DWP (in a Jobcentre Plus call centre). The stress it puts on you is incredible but if you can cope with it, good luck to you.
They are a harsh employer i.e. don’t go a second over your break or you will be in trouble and don’t have more than 8 days off sick per year and, if you do, make sure you are a union member.
If you have problems with sitting in front of your PC i.e. need a special chair or other special aids, don’t expect them within 2 years (I know people who have waited longer) and this is working for the government who made up the laws for people with disabilities.
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I am sure he will find some type of job to see him through, with the attitude he seems to have.
A point on the school issue trips school play a little different but any letter from the school requesting a voluntary contribution he need not pay as the school can not enforce this and im sure benefits do not run to school contributions. Just tell the school no money until i am earning .And if they moan go straight to the relevent dept and complain.
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From a land far away I look back to a place that I arrived in some 40 years ago… a younger man with a wife and 3 kids, my Tools and my Indentures and to my dismay discovered that we could not as a single bread winner family make ends meet!
Dawley New Town was in its infancy and Telford was not even a thought and the promises of mealy mouthed politicians were as nought!
I was forced to travel daily back to were we had come from to earn our daily bread! you think it is tough now? I could relate a narrative of just how tough it was then!
It finally became apparent that because of crass political mismanagement and almost criminal incompetence that Britain’s manufacturing base was being poured down the toilet so I took my Skills, my Tools, my Indentures and together with my Family I crossed the Western Ocean and I have never looked back!.
To the correspondent I say … Do not give up! remain positive! and remember the old Irish philosophy “As one door shuts, another one opens!”…
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i also thought that ageism had been stamped out. the one company i know of that is light years ahead of the game is B & Q who have large warehouse retail outlets well supplied with more elderly experienced staff
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haha labour isnt working!!!!!
ha ha
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this guy is lazy he could get a job if he really wanted
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get on your bike, get down the job centre boyo
it would help if there was george osbourne running the economy obviously, but even now with these leftie loons, there are plenty of jobs
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i am sure tory is a rabid left winger, as his outpourings will ensure the tories remain in opposition for decades to come
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There are still high paying jobs on certain job sites, here’s 3 from about.com’s top ten job sites-
http://www.linkedin.com (professional networking)
http://www.indeed.com (aggregated listings)
http://www.realmatch.com (matches jobs based on your skills)
good luck to those looking.
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I too work for the Jobcentre, and I know there are jobs out there for people who are willing to work.
Every day I put on dozens of jobs for cleaners, carers or labourers. But unfortunatly some people are better off claiming there JSA and other benefits than earning National Minimum Wage. So please don’t say it’s through lack of jobs that people are unemployed.
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“I am sure tory is a rabid left winger”.
Have you only just realised that Devon.
Seeing that it takes three blogs to get his juvenile and crass message across, one could be forgiven for thinking that he was the Leader of the local Labour Party. Certainly no member of the Tory Party would have the lack of intelligence or baby inclined brain to even bother to put it into a blog if one even thought that.
I would imagine, if he is not a Labourite, he is a ten or eleven year old, learning his first faltering steps on a PC and putting into print, items he has just read in the “Socialist Worker”.
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Agree with you Devon whilst The Conservatives have supporters like Tory Boy they will never get in
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Susan there are very few real jobs on the web just lots of agencies purporting wonderful jobs but when you drill down there is very little substance.
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the council could use terrance surrely cus hes a trades man ?
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