Communiqué, issue 4, 2003
Articles
- An abrupt halt to a brilliant career
- Monitoring industrial change in Europe
- Time for European-level workplace privacy regulation
- Northern Europeans most satisfied with leisure time
- Towards better living and working conditions in Europe
- Planning for the future
- Win-win effect possible with new working time arrangements
- Track record in monitoring working conditions
Previous issues of Communiqué
Changing working time arrangements by using a dynamic life-course approach allows employees to extend their working life and creates a possible win-win situation for employees, companies and pension funds. This is according to the Foundation’s new report, A new organisation of time throughout working life, to be presented at an Italian Presidency EU seminar in Bologna on ageing and pensions on 18 September 2003.
The report says public policy and the social partners should support a dynamic life-course policy. This would involve creating time arrangements which provide more employee-friendly working time flexibility without reducing competitiveness, and allow individual employees and families to accumulate time over the life course (long term working time accounts) and through later retirement (abolish early retirement schemes). These ‘time accounts’ could then be used in a flexible way in relevant phases of a person’s life for the purposes of care, lifelong learning and leisure. The report argues that being able to offset the availability of substantial fully paid time blocks in early life phases against a substantial increase in effective retirement age should ensure winners all round.
The report can be downloaded at www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications/EF0336.htm