Page 57 - increasing-the-value-of-age-guidance-in-employers-age-management-strategies

Increasing the value of age: guidance in employers’ age management strategies

All Member States have adopted legislation and measures to fight age
discrimination. In principle, this means that a worker’s age can no longer be a
(formal) factor in human resources management decisions, including recruitment
as well as redundancy. In some countries, there are stipulations in the labour
code that make it more difficult to make older workers redundant. In Germany,
the Netherlands and Sweden there is a ‘last in, first out’ provision in collective
dismissals. In Latvia the labour code stipulates that those five years from
retirement should be seen as a priority when deciding which employees are kept
in employment during a collective redundancy.
Anti-age discrimination legislation might tend to encourage governments to
develop generic policies, not addressing specific target groups such as older
workers. By encouraging no distinction on the basis of sex, age or other factors to
fight the stigmatisation of some groups, such legislation has the effect of
prompting employers to manage employees’ training and working arrangements
according to individual needs, rather than general features such as age. This
type of approach carries, nevertheless, an underidentification risk of age-related
needs in the definition of both policy and firm-level support measures.
Examples of countries following generalist policies are Denmark, Estonia,
the Netherlands and Sweden. Denmark is an example where older workers have
the same right to unemployment benefits and to receive job-training and other
offers according to active labour market policy provisions.
In these countries, with little exception, there are no special activation
instruments for the older unemployed. This does not exclude the possibility of ad
hoc measures set up by job centres combining the available instruments
(training, wage-subsidies) to fit the needs of a particular target group, for instance
among the older unemployed.
There are few national laws or mandatory guidelines for active age
management in workplaces; the exception is France, having one of the most
influential regulations in the field of active ageing. The French Law on the finance
of social security for 2009, adopted in December 2008 (Loi No 2008-1330),
introduced the obligation for French companies, having more than 50 employees,
to develop an enterprise or group agreement or an action plan in favour of the
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employment of older workers ( ).
The law invites social partners to identify in each firm specific active ageing
issues: recruitment of older workers; anticipation of career development;

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( ) If no action is taken, companies are fined, and they must pay a penalty of a 1% of the
total payroll during the time the enterprise lacks these agreements/plans (since
1 January 2010).

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