Autonomous Framework Agreement between the European Social Partners on Active Ageing and Intergenerational Approach (8

March 2017)

The idea of an autonomous framework agreement, already envisaged in the Work Programme of the European Social Partners 2015-2017, was realised at the Tripartite Social Summit, when ETUC (and its liaison committee EUROCADRES/CEC), BusinessEurope, CEEP and SMEunited (formerly UEAPME) signed an agreement that would also commit all their member or-ganisations to implementation, in accordance with the procedures under Art. 155 TFEU, within 3 years of its signature (i.e., before 8 March 2020). The signatories

recognised that the rationale of the framework agreement lies in its link with the Social Pillar which, in § 10, letter b, states that “Workers have the right to a work-ing environment which is adapted to their occupational needs and which permits them to prolong their participation in the labour market”. The agreement goes beyond the logic of minimum health and safety standards, recognising that work-ers have the right to a working environment adapted to their specific professional needs (in accordance with the guiding principle of the long-standing, still largely unimplemented, framework Directive 89/391/EEC) and transferring to compa-nies the commitment to adaptively prolonging working life (also conditioned by chronic or age-related disabling or degenerative pathologies) by means of an ap-propriate environment and working methods. Specifically, the social partners can support the implementation of the European Pillar on a national level through collective bargaining and the collection and exchange of good practices through-out the European Union. The Commission stresses that “at EU-level, the social partners […] can promote and develop common standards on a national or Un-ion level”. Despite these ambitious plans, the implementatUn-ion of the framework agreement is seriously behind schedule: it has not even been formally translated into the languages of the Union. The text of the agreement states that “measures shall be implemented, where appropriate at national, sectoral and/or company level, to facilitate the active participation of older workers and to ensure that they remain in the labour market until the legal retirement age and, at the same time, to ensure that measures are taken to facilitate intergenerational transitions in the context of high youth unemployment”. Indeed, the trade unions are certain that adaptive measures should always be taken: the formula “where necessary” is ev-idently a lexical compromise between the social partners that explains the reasons for the lack of practical implementation, postulating a (still unimplemented) compromise in the processes of production and work organisation. “Such measures should aim at significantly improving the ability of workers of all ages to remain in the labour market, healthy and active until retirement age”. The objectives of the adaptive measures should capture both the union’s need (for subjectively ‘healthy’ work) and the employer’s need (for profitably ‘active’ work) in the logic of the worker’s life cycle. Another sensitive point of the agreement is the choice of tools to achieve the objective. For the trade unions, the key aspect was the need to adopt collective measures, enhancing the value of negotiation, without leaving the choice of means to unilateral employer initiatives (which could instead be those of individual bargaining between employer and em-ployee). In this case too, a textual compromise formula also allows human re-sources managers to take unilateral adaptive initiatives. The central point of the agreement is the identification of the people responsible for the required measures. Overcoming any autarkic wishful thinking, the social partners have stated that successfully meeting the challenges arising from demographic change does not depend solely on their action, but that EU and national public

authorities must ensure a regulatory framework that encourages and promotes active ageing and the intergenerational approach. The issue of tax incentives for companies investing in active ageing and disability/diversity management is not unconnected with this issue, which needs to be addressed (as will be seen in the Conclusions of this volume) with farsightedness and strategic vision. Central to the logic of the agreement are also public-private partnerships, which are essen-tial above all for the implementation of solidarity-based and inclusive welfare mix measures for European worker-citizens in the workplace. Another program-matic junction fraught with practical implications is the innovative life-cycle ap-proach: the preservation of adequate productivity in old age is linked to its con-tinuous care, calibration and reshaping. This means overcoming the standardisa-tion of work and encouraging the development of ‘quality jobs’ to enable people with disabilities in particular to enter the labour market and remain in it until retirement age. This has an impact on the development of digitalisation in the sector, which should be directed towards active ageing rather than the digital divide. Furthermore, the agreement highlights the two-way process of transfer-ring skills between older and younger workers in a healthy intergenerational ap-proach. The most important part of the agreement is, in my opinion, the one that identifies tools, measures and actions of the social partners, classified in the following five fields of action.

1 – Strategic Assessments of Workforce Demographics

Depending on the industrial relations context on a national level, such strategic assessments, periodically updated to ensure that social partners have all the nec-essary information to understand and address demographic trends in the labour market, could include, inter alia: a) current and projected age pyramid, including gender aspects; b) skills, qualifications and experience; c) working conditions; d) specific occupational health and safety considerations, in particular for heavy work; e) developments related to digitalisation and innovation.

2 – Health and Safety at Work

Adequate information, available to the social partners, makes it possible, for ex-ample, to identify tasks which are particularly demanding from a physical and/or mental point of view, and thus to anticipate, prevent and assess risks to health and safety at work, in accordance with the framework Directive on health and safety at work (89/391/EEC). This should make it possible to identify suitable adaptive measures to ensure ‘healthy’ and ‘active’ work until retirement age. Even though the text of the agreement only refers to the need for adaptive measures in situations of ‘excessive demands’ on workers, i.e., excessive physical perfor-mance requirements or excessive mental pressure, trade unions believe that

adaptive measures are always necessary: the legal concepts of ‘work performance’

and ‘exact performance’ must be reshaped and calibrated according to the logic of the life cycle and, above all, according to the logic of non-discrimination and substantial equality of working conditions between people with different abilities.

Consequently, the tools and measures to be adopted could include the adaptation of production processes and workplaces; the re-registration (i.e., the continuous readjustment of the tasks to which workers are assigned) of workers; prevention and health and safety risk assessment strategies, in compliance with existing leg-islative obligations, including on-the-job training; organisational measures mod-ulated on the physical and psychological characteristics of workers, including dif-ferent abilities.

3 – Management of Skills and Competences

Skills development throughout working life must be promoted for employability and in order to safeguard the human capital of companies. Lifelong learning, together with the perspective of career development, requires a broad and con-tinuous training offer, which is also central to the intergenerational approach.

The social partners have an important role to play in highlighting the different skills needed and negotiating how to acquire them, also with a view to possible mobility from one sector to another: this is the phenomenon of professional transitions, to be tackled and managed from an inclusive and solidarity-based perspective, especially in the financial sector. The other relevant phenomenon in disability management is the development of constantly updated digital skills: the generation gap is, especially in the financial sector, one of the main problems to be tackled in order to prevent the early exclusion from the labour market of workers with different abilities. The agreement identifies, among the actions of the social partners, the motivation to participate and the integration of age man-agement in the development of formal and informal competences during their working life.

4 – Work organisation

The issue has traditionally been an obstacle to trade union demands for manage-ment involvemanage-ment: in fact, it is considered by employers as an area reserved for their free and unconditional initiative. The agreement in question is also affected by the employer’s unwillingness to implement a disclosure of work organisation, stating that the implementation of adaptable lifelong work organisation should be done either through collective measures “or individually, in accordance with social dialogue practices at the workplace”. Conversely, implementing the gen-eral principle of the entrepreneur’s legal responsibility, the agreement clarifies that the legal obligation to ensure the health and safety and productivity of

workers imposes on the employer all possible improvements in terms of activity allocation. Among the adaptive measures indicated, there are: working arrange-ments, including working time; establishment of mixed work teams (open to val-uing different skills); transitional measures for older workers towards the end of their working life; recruitment of new staff to cope with age-related workloads in the workforce.

5 – Intergenerational Approach

All workers should be assessed on the basis of their skills, abilities and knowledge, regardless of their age and with a view to full employment integra-tion, avoiding stereotypes and barriers. Adaptation tools include: distribution of tasks according to different abilities/skills/knowledge developed in the life cycle;

mentoring/coaching programmes; programmes for mutual transfer of knowledge and skills (including transversal, digital and business skills), between workers of different age groups; creation of knowledge banks for corporate iden-tity perpetuation; collaboration with educational institutions or public employ-ment services to facilitate transitions in the labour market inside and outside the corporate group.

1.8. Directive 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council