Old Hands

Rubery Owen employs 6,000 people at their Darlaston works. But what about those men facing retirement - how do they avoid ending up on the scrapheap?

The forward thinking engineering firm of Rubery Owen in Darlaston created a scheme in 1949, called the Sons of Rest, in which their retired workers could continue to do light work alongside their former colleagues. Retirement is considered to be a social problem for men with 'nothing to do but hang about aimlessly', rather like the juvenile delinquents who were being demonised around the same time.