When Denmark staged the opening conference for ‘The European year
for active ageing and solidarity between generations’, the Danes
gathered two EU commissioners, several government ministers and
representatives from authorities, NGOs, the social partners,
researchers and journalists from across Europe. The conference
encompassed the entire spectre of issues emerging from an ageing
society – not least the challenges associated with the fact that older
people become older and stay young and healthy for longer. If more and
more people live until they are a hundred they could be enjoying 30
years of retirement. But this could also mean a burden on society, the
older people themselves and not least on younger generations when fewer
people of employable age contribute to the welfare society. This is why
active ageing is being made a top priority in Europe.
When Sweden organised the Northern Future Forum in Stockholm in
February, the conference gathered nine leaders from the UK, the Baltic
and Nordic countries, researchers and business leaders. One of two main
themes was how to get more people to work into older age. Sweden’s
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt himself created a debate on the eve of
the conference when suggesting that we might have to work until we turn
75.
When Norway’s Minister for Labour, Hanne Bjurstrøm, opened the
Norwegian year for active ageing, she promoted the idea of a flexible
retirement age, yet she maintained she was not sure that abandoning the
70 year limit would be the best senior policy initiative.
In Iceland it is not unusual for people to work until the age of
75, and Icelanders work for longer than anyone else in Europe.
Icelanders like to work, our correspondent writes. Why? And have
employers used the crisis to get rid of older workers?
The quality of working life is crucial to getting people to stay in
work for longer. Many employers used to do all they could to get rid of
older employees. This mentality appears to have changed. Yet there
seems to be few leaders who make a conscious decision to do something
in order to hold on to older workers. We highlight two good
examples: the Sahalahti model in Finland and Vattenfall in Sweden.
The demographic development, debated for years, has for many
remained a distant future issue. Now the future has arrived. The Nordic
Labour Journal’s theme will highlight some of the debates and
consequences linked to this.
When the World War II baby boomers leave the labour market, we are
at the beginning of something Europe has never seen the like of. That’s
when the debates about the future become interesting. In five years
there might be fewer people working than people who aren’t. In not too
long we might well be debating how the good life as a centenarian
should be.
