The Invisible Greeks: unemployed over 50 with no chance for a job

“They won’t hire me even to wash dishes in a restaurant kitchen,” Anna told me a couple of days before Christmas – the third Christmas she has to spend without work. The 50-year-old woman has been desperately seeking for a job. Any job at any salary. She has been sending her CV to almost any job vacancy here in Greece and these are not many. In the four and a half years she has been living without a steady work, she has sent her CV more than 100 times. She doesn’t even remember exactly. She has been surviving due to some short-term jobs for 1-3 months, then she is jobless for an equally long time, then again a short-term job. These jobs came through the classic recipe: the friend of a friend who knew somebody who needed personnel for a short-period of time. Anne went and had to go. She worked mostly without social insurance and therefore no chance for the miserably low unemployment allowance. She has even applied to companies abroad. Nothing. In a total of more than 100 job applications, she received only 4 chances for an interview. And never got the job she applied for. She made cuts in her CV, omitted her long experience, the little extras like more than one foreign language. No matter how she modified her CV – from “rich” to “lean” – she never got hired to a full time job that would allow her to earn a descent living without the long periods of unemployment, desperation and the anxiety of how to pay bills and rent or buy something so simple like a loaf of bread.

Anna is not alone. I know also Giannis, 63, and Kostas, 58, and Xrysoula, 53,… former employees in the private sector or former self-employed who struggle to get a job but without any success in Greece of economic crisis.

Unemployment for people over 50 is not a purely Greek problem. But things are here worse due to the absence of the welfare state that could provide this people with the basics – theoretically.

“Unemployed 50+ are invisible,” wrote in an article Giorgos Floras, member of the board of directors of the Athens Chamber of Tradesmen. The state is indifferent towards them, the banks support only businesses set up by young entrepreneurs and the companies won’t hire them.

“Businesses that have survived the economic crisis hurricane do not want to hear about a 50-year-old seeking for work. They are indifferent about the working experience of this persona. All they care about is the employment of a young employee for a monthly wage of 350 -500 euro.

Even if the unemployed of 50+ accepts such a salary, the answer is “No”. And it is “No”, because the 50-year-old has increased family obligations, knows much more about life and labor conditions, so his or her management is more difficult.

Employers’ arbitrariness (which always existed and will exist) like labor without insurance etc will not be easily accepted by the 50+.

Floras notes further that the majority of the former self-employed have debts in the tax office and the social security funds and that they are unable to pay their debts without a work and sharply criticizes the bureaucratic red tapes towards these people that hinder them to even start a new business. “it’s not coincidence that suicides are committed by those aged 50+.”

The aversion of the society towards the unemployment of 50+ and destruction of small enterprises has dimensions of a “social racism.”

I don’t know what other countries do for the “unemployed of 50+” and how they can be integrated back to the labor market. But I know that in Greece, the majority of people of the private sector I know cannot go into early retirement to secure at least some kind of basic living even with a low pension of three hundred euro.

No pension, no work, no self-employment, no income.

Anna narrowly escaped homelessness two months ago, after some friends scraped together 65 euro. She paid €50 to the landlord and €15 for the electricity bill. Now, she is 4 months behind in her rent, her electricity debt is more than 350 euro.

So what’s the present for these people?

Oh Yes, we have the charity mechanism….

PS I don’t even dare to write about their “future”.