Active Seniors in Virtual Workspaces: Methodologies in Social Innovation

1. Active Seniors in Virtual Workspaces: Methodologies in Social Innovation eSangathan Conference Brussels, 18 September 2008 Bruno Costantini General Secretary of FERPA

2. Who are we? • The European Federation of Retired and Elderly People is a member of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). It was founded in 1993 by pensioners who wanted to carry on their trade union struggle for a fairer, more democratic, more civic-minded and inclusive society with young people and active workers. • FERPA’s 9 million-strong membership makes it the most representative pensioners’ union in Europe today. It coordinates its policy with that of the ETUC, especially on social security and social protection, with particular focus on pensions, health care, and action against social exclusion and poverty. • FERPA works actively to shape European Union legislation and policies through direct lobbying of different European institutions. It wants a procedure to be set up for the European Commission to consult the most representative organisations of retired and elderly people so that their voice can be heard. • The Federation’s member organisations also lobby their national governments, especially ahead of European Councilmeetings whose agendasinclude issues of concern to retired and elderly people.

3. Active Ageing WorkersGeneral aspects • Elderly workers’ protection became one of the EU’s priorities on the employment front, as the differences in the employment rates of elderly workers constitute an important aspect of the inequalities in the different Member States. • The incentive towards active ageing meets two occupational targets set by the EU to “become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge economy of the world”by 2010. • During the European Council of Stockholm, in 2001, it was decided to raise the employment average rate of the European population aged between 55 and 64 to 50%.

4. Active Ageing WorkersGeneral aspects • In 2002, the European Council of Barcelona concluded with an undertaking, by Members States, for the actual average retirement ageto be gradually increasedby about 5 years by 2010. • Even in the European Council in the spring of 2004 on “Promoting Lisbon reforms in the enlarged Union”, the Commission, in setting the priorities to re-launch the Lisbon Agenda, stressed the importance of extending the active life of workers. • In many EU countries the national governments, being necessarily forced to face up to demographic ageing, the financial sustainability of welfare systems and the changing needs of the labour market, are endeavouring, albeit together with other modalities of intervention, to replace “the culture of early retirement” from the productive cycle, with a culture of delayed retirement.

5. Managing Active ageing: 3 phases • 1980s: young in – old out phase Recourse to social security, early retirement, and redundancy absorbing mechanisms • 1990s: transition phase Transition from early retirement to national policies to tackle redundancies; extension of working life; raising of the legal retirement age • Since 2003-2004: experimental phase First initiatives to keep elderly people employed in certain countries

6. Employment rate of people over 55 (Source: EUROSTAT)

7. Average retirement age (Source: EUROSTAT)

8. The social dimensions to consider • Convince workers to extend their working life, in particular those who are close to retirement • Convince companies to concentrate on elderly workers, either by redesigning their own organisation, or by no longer opting to deprive themselves of their experience for the sake of labour costs alone • Harmonise the systems of social protection, safety nets, and welfare, as well as welfare policies, to bring them in line with the required changes

9. The reintegration process • Subsidies to companies that employ elderly workers through part-time contracts or other forms of flexible contracts • Initiatives to sustain employment of the elderly through forms of tutoring/support for creating businesses or micro-businesses and for creating self-employment • In the reintegration process, the social partners play a crucial role in encouraging enterprises to adopt a strategy for promoting active ageing, extending and improving the quality of the professional life, and developing, through negotiations, a participatory approach to a better and more effective management of the ageing factor.

10. Hiring of workers. All policies intended to ensure equal opportunities for elderly workers to access available jobs, by concurrently ensuring the absence of direct or indirect discrimination; Training, development and promotion. Policies intended to ensure that training opportunities and successful careersare not refused to elderly workers. Such policies can be implemented both inside and outside the enterprise, through training schemes for elderly workers in some social utility programmes or in targeted short-term integration in the world of work; Forms of organization of flexible work. More flexibility for elderly workersconcerning working time or the date and type of retirement; 4. Redistribution of heavy work and reconfiguration of the workplace. A series of measures taken in different Member States to deal with diminished physical resistance due to the age, is included in this area. Typical examples include the exclusion of the obligation to carry heavy material loads or the reconfiguration of the workplace with, for instance, a higher lighting system. 5. Change of Employers’ attitudes . All the campaigns carried out by the different governments to raise awareness among managers, and all the persons involved in human resources, are included in this area. The European employment strategy (Wim Cock Report 2003)

11. Good practices Good practices to promote or implement active ageing policies: • Objective: employment of elderly workers • Training schemes, development of and capitalization on skills • Flexible forms of the organization of work (working time) • Re-distribution of the workload • Awareness raising among trade unions about employers

12. The role of the Member States • In line with the Commission’s request, Member States need to define, under their National Action Plans (NAP) for employment, measures to support elderly workers, with appropriate actions on the tax and social security system, access to skill acquisition and to continuing training, and fighting against discrimination. • Active life extension was pursued by most NAPs through a revision of the national social security system geared mainly to raising the retirement age (Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland and Portugal); in some cases incentives were given – through tax reliefor the reduction of social security contributions – to enterprises that expressed the intention to hire elderly workers (the Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, Belgium); in other cases the active life of elderly workers was promoted by improving the employability of the single worker (Spain, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany). • Other planned measures concerned the adoption of a part-time work system, whereby the income is integrated by a reduced pension (Germany, Austria) and, finally, the increase in the cost to enterprises that make workers over 50 redundant (France).

13. The role of the Member States (2) • Jointly and in line with NAPs, the social partners faced specific aspects of ageing, by signing tripartite global programmes (as in the case of Finland and Germany), collective agreements (the Netherlands and Belgium) or territorial or framework agreements (France and Denmark). The different strategies applied by the social partners aregeared essentially to qualitative intervention in terms of the employment level and adaptability, improvements at the workplace, more flexible work organization and a gradual reduction of the work load. • This would undoubtedly lead to a tangible improvement of the agreements on working conditions and the quality of working life for elderly workers (men and women) over 55, even with particular emphasis on the fight against discrimination. • In such context, all Agreements signed at institutional level for the defence of an active role for the elderly in the social, cultural (voluntary activity) and working life, would assume a greater value (mentoring, tutoring, intra- generational exchange management, etc.)

14. Develop initiatives on information and the sharing of good practices on industrial relations at national level, following the European standard on active ageing; gather good practices on industrial relations regarding employment of workers over 55 years (collective agreements, inter-confederation agreements, territorial agreements, understandings for employment, social and employment policy platforms,…); Offer opportunities for reflection on how industrial relations, negotiations and trade union action can be strengthened and coordinated to provide successful answers to the problem of workers over 55; Encourage the exchange of experiences and the creation of a network between national and international experts on active ageing; Evaluate the incidence of the targets of active ageing and of the contribution of elderly citizens to the improvement of social life in the territorial development plans; Contribute actively to the discussion (and implementation) of European policies on the employment of the elderly; Attach particular importance to the persistent gender discrimination that still affects workers over 55 and to the different improving practices in industrial relations. Some final proposals for the social partners

15. Thank you very much