ROCKLAND – Advocates for job seekers over age 55 met Wednesday with area employers to raise their awareness of the benefits of hiring older people.

“Older workers have a better work ethic, are punctual, and they can be flexible about their work shifts,” said David Tomm, president of Seasoned Workforce LLC, a private temporary employment company serving senior citizens who want to keep working after retirement.

Tomm facilitated the meeting at the Rockland Career Center and encouraged the 15 participants attending to express their views on the employment of older people.

The group represented employers from the manufacturing, hospitality, retail, banking, employment and publishing sectors, as well as from the state of Maine.

The Maine Department of Labor is faced with the challenge of a shrinking work force caused by a population decline, mature work force retirements and an exodus of young people seeking jobs out of state, Tomm said.

Among the concerns expressed at Wednesday’s meeting were older workers’ lack of technology skills and their inability to lift heavy objects.

“Some employers hesitate to hire seasoned workers because they can’t keep up or won’t keep up with the technology,” Tomm said.

At the same time, surveys show that more than half the Americans ages 65-69 use the Internet, and employees between the ages of 50 and 59 use a computer at work.

Some employers think it costs too much to hire older workers because of health care costs.

Yet facts show that the turnover of workers over 60 is one-sixth that of workers less than age 35, Tomm said.

Moreover, absenteeism is inversely proportional to age, Tomm said.

Tomm gave the example of a local woman who had found a job after first serving as a volunteer with Seasoned Workforce and then with the organization that hired her.

“She had been looking for over a year,” he said.

“That’s the kind of thing we’re trying to do here, to help people build their confidence,” he added.

John Christie, job counselor at the Rockland Career Center, told the gathering that he is concerned about all job seekers in his area, including older workers.

Joking about his age as one of the oldest people in the room, Christie said, “I am the person responsible for the relations between the Bureau of Employment Services in the Rockland jurisdiction and the employers in the region.

“All of our people come in here every morning to try to find people jobs and to find good people for the employers,” he said. “That’s our occupation and our preoccupation.”

“We try to find all the ways that we can to make sure that the people who come in here find a job, and we want to make sure that employers in the area have access to all of the people who come and see us,” he said of the 900 visits a month the Career Center gets from job seekers.

Christie praised the staff for its sensitivity to the needs of all who come into his office looking for work.

Seasoned Workforce volunteer Julie Palm pointed out that older workers could be creative about options to the traditional eight-hour workday by offering to work part time, share jobs with other workers, and show up on weekends and at other peak times.

Also, they have a lifetime of skills that often go unpublicized but end up being useful to an employer.

Mandy Worden, human resources manager at the Rockland Home Depot store, later praised the session.

“I think it was an excellent opportunity to discuss the challenges we all seem to be facing of not having applicants who are qualified,” she said.