Leader: Luigi Burroni (UNIFI); Other collaborator(s):
The aim of the task is to find suitable ways to keep older workers productively at work, keeping into account both workers’ and employers’ needs and motivations. This can be achieved through three main pillars: 1) legal and political frameworks, 2) industrial relation systems and 3) corporate practices. Little is known about the effectiveness of retention and workplace accommodation measures for specific business sectors, different occupations, or employees with different personal or socio-economic needs. A comparative multi-level case study analysis of policies and practices will help to cover the research gap on the topic and will provide practical tools for academics and practitioners.
Brief description of the activities and of the intermediate results: We started with the analysis of collective bargaining. Our findings show that Italian social partners neglect workforce ageing effects on firms’ organizations and employees’ conditions when regulating employment relations at the sectoral level. The content analysis of the 25 most representative Italian sectoral collective agreements reveals that collective bargaining does not focus on workplace accommodation for older workers nor invests in their empowerment with provisions to increase their productivity. Social partners mostly neglect their interest representation at the least at the sectoral level. In very few cases, we found provisions aimed at older workers or to foster intergenerational collaboration, trough working time reduction, early retirement, or younger workers tutoring, for example. In both cases, provisions promote or imply older workers’ retirement. We label the collective bargaining approach to older workers as “representative myopia”. Social partners do not deal with the consequences of workforce ageing in terms of labour productivity reduction or deterioration of working conditions. We adopted the same research design to study older workers’ representation in the Dutch collective agreements at the sectoral level. The ageing of the Dutch population is similar to that of Italy, even though the proportion of older workers in total employment is lower than in Italy. The comparative results show a greater awareness of Dutch social partners regarding older workers’ conditions. Collective agreements dispose of many accommodative and empowering provisions to regulate older workers’ work. Moreover, we started the research phase on public policies to face with an ageing workforce. By now, we conducted twenty interviews to union and company representatives about the Contratto di espansione, an employment policy to manage company restructuring by mixing early retirement, training, short-time work and hiring. The policy is well suited to manage ageing workers.
Main policy, industrial and scientific implications: Policy implications relate to the rule-making role of collective bargaining. Sectoral collective agreements set the standard for several employee relations dimensions, from wage levels to working hours, from work organization to workplace disposition. The lack of older worker-specific provisions may negatively affect the quality of older workers’ work, on the one hand, and firms’ competitiveness, on the other. It increases the importance of company bargaining, which could lead to workforce inequalities. We then stress the importance of developing preventive and proactive approaches to workforce ageing. A preventive approach could tackle ageing before it deploys its effects at the individual and company level. A proactive approach could improve older workers’ capabilities and make their working conditions more sustainable.
We submitted a paper titled “La regolazione del lavoro che invecchia: la rappresentanza dei lavoratori over 50 nei contratti collettivi in Italia” to the Italian journal “Stato e Mercato” (Social Sciences A-class journal). At the end of September, we received the reviews from anonyms referees that suggested major revisions.
We presented the “Regulating Ageing: Ageing Workforce Management through Collective Bargaining in Italy and the Netherlands” paper at the 22nd ESPAnet Europe Conference held in Tampere, August 28-30.
We presented the paper “Regulating Ageing: Ageing Workforce Management through Collective Bargaining in Italy and the Netherlands” at the 16th ESA Conference in Porto, August 27-30.
We presented the paper titled “Regolare il lavoro che invecchia. La gestione dell’invecchiamento della forza lavoro tramite la contrattazione collettiva in Italia e nei Paesi Bassi” at the XVII ESPAnet Italia Conference held in Napoli, September 4-6. At the same conference, Dario Raspanti coauthored a presentation with Carmela Guarascio (University of Macerata) and Emanuele De Girolamo (University of Milan) titled “Tra politiche attive e passive del lavoro: il contratto di espansione come strumento per la transizione occupazionale”.
Dario Raspanti co-authored the session proposal “Il mondo del lavoro alla sfida dell’invecchiamento” for the IX Italian Economic Sociology Association (SISEC) with Eleonora Trappolini (La Sapienza University of Rome) and Giulia Cavallini (University of Florence). The session proposal has been accepted. The Conference will be held in Pavia from January 29 to February 1 2025.
Between October and December 2024, we completed the interview plan with employers’ organisations and unions representatives. With this, we concluded the first pillar of Task 1.5, focsed on the role of Italian social partners in regulating the workforce ageing process. However, we decided to broaden the comparative analysis by collecting Austrian sectoral agreements, to be compared with the Dutch and the Italian case.
We have also started the second pillar of Task 1.5 on labour market policy. We decided to focus on the GOL programme. GOL is a national active labour market policy targeting, among others, unemployed over 55 years. We decided to compare GOL implementation in two regional cases: Lombardy and Calabria. We then started the collection and the analysis of regional legislation and documents. We selected regional governments’ representatives to interview in the second part of the analysis.
Dissemination involved both conference presentations and paper submission. We presented the paper “Regolare il lavoro che invecchia. La regolazione dell’invecchiamento della forza lavoro tramite la contrattazione collettiva in Italia e nei Paesi Bassi” at the ESRI annual conference held at La Sapienza University on October 23th-24th, 2024. We presented a poster at the kickoff event of Age.Florence on December 19th, 2024.
Dario Raspanti submitted the paper “Parti sociali e invecchiamento della forza lavoro: strategie d’azione e rappresentanza dei lavoratori over 50 in tre settori” to the journal “Giornale di Diritto del Lavoro e delle Relazioni Industriali”. We are waiting for the first round of reviews. Dario Raspanti, together with with Emanuele De Girolamo and Carmela Guarascio, submitted the paper “Ristrutturazione occupazionale e transizione tecnologica nelle imprese italiane: sfide e opportunità del Contratto di espansione” to the journal “Polis” (under review). Finally, the paper “La regolazione del lavoro che invecchia: la rappresentanza dei lavoratori over 50 nei contratti collettivi in Italia” by Dario Raspanti, Luigi Burroni and Giulia Cavallini was accepted for publication in “Stato e Mercato”, 3/2024.
Coming soon