EUROPEAN PAPERS ON THE NEW WELFARE

7. Points of Synthesis

As shown in the first part of this piece the Italian model for governing the transition from employment to retirement is undergoing a progressive shift towards a situation in which the strong tendency to passive protection against the risk of unemployment of elderly workers is not accompanied by the policy of activation in the labour market. The consequence of this process is an employment rate among the over 55s that is among the lowest in Europe, and exposure to the risk of social exclusion for growing numbers of mature people who lose their jobs and reach retirement by means of ever less linear pathways.

From the analysis carried out in the second part of this article, which makes particular reference to workers dismissed early from the manufacturing sector, possible lines of definition for a complex active ageing strategy have emerged, its major objective being the prolonging of presence in the labour market. It has been shown that there is a need for a differentiation between the policy tools relating to the various personal and professional characteristics of older workers that cannot be reduced to recorded age alone. In short the analysis suggests the active ageing strategy should be subdivided into three lines, which, conceptually speaking, in following Jensen’s explanatory model (2007) based on the Push, Pull and Jump models, could respond to the three different bands of early exit from the labour market: the first, of a defensive type with regard to the Push processes, aimed at the oldest workers who have suffered the loss of employment and do not have the professional prerequisites required by the market; the second, of a promotional nature, to contest the Pull effects, directed at the older workers with professional skills which are sellable on the market, whether they have been dismissed from employment or have voluntarily left the labour market; the third, accompanying the Jump processes, adopts a comprehensive active ageing perspective, and is directed at those in advanced years who have alternative orientations to those used in the labour market. In the three strategies mentioned it is essential that employment centres work well both in supplying employment services and in building a system of governance of the local labour market in partnership with public institutions, unions and businesses.

The analysis carried out shows, moreover, that current active ageing policies proceed according to an adaptive logic since they work on a generation of workers with kinds of careers and personal expectations formed in an economic and social protection system now largely dismantled. For the current ranks of adults, but most of all for the next generation of young people even more exposed to employment flexibility over the entire course of their life cycle active ageing will have to include, among its main objectives, social innovation for age management in every phase of one’s biographical and professional journey. It will also require a rethinking on how to organise working and non working time over the course of a life including when it comes to the increase in average life expectancy. The world of production will have to create a new age culture in line with demographic dynamics, in rebalancing the needs for efficiency between the economic system and social protection while guaranteeing the widest possible margin of freedom and personal independence as age increases (Paci, 2005). The Italian case is particularly problematic because of the inertia of the business system in adopting ageing management systems (Ilmarinen, 2007) consistent with the collective objectives of lengthening average active life. There are, for example few developed practices for planning careers, for protecting health and for professional up-dating. Active employment policies, despite interesting experimental projects at local level, are still far from incorporating active ageing principles as guidelines for supporting the development of lifelong working pathways. The weakness, particularly in relation to continuous education (Isfol, 2008) acts as a brake on the development of an innovative approach to active ageing, if one considers, as Orio Giarini writes that “education, including continuous education, must not be limited to just keeping up to date with each person’s specialisation (even if it is as well that one thoroughly does so), but it must allow and facilitate change of direction, in the course of life, with activities consonant with every age group” (2005). This last aspect appears to represent the most complex challenge, but also the one that is most in line with the transformations of the contemporary socio-economic system. It opens up the debate on active ageing to more general questions of social innovation such as, for example, social recognition of non market based work, in which, in a very individualised way — as second career experiences show — personal needs for self fulfilment are reconciled with collective needs for production and social reproduction.

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