Given his skills and his experience, getting work on the construction sites in and around Merseyside should have been easy. But between 2003 and 2009 Bill Parry was finding it almost impossible. He had no idea why. "In those days you just turned up at a building site and asked for work. And usually there was no problem. But then a new pattern seemed to emerge. The foreman would tell us to come back in a couple of days. And when we did it was always the same story, 'Sorry lads, we're not taking on at the moment'." At that time Bill was in his mid to late forties. He was a trained joiner and he could turn his hand to most jobs on a building site. It was a combination of skill and experience that should have made him highly employable. But time and time again, employers were turning him down in favour of younger, less experienced workers.
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