France: National accord on older workers

A new national agreement aims to increase the labour market participation rate of older workers in France. The agreement focuses on changing attitudes to older workers, ensuring career development by means of training and adapting jobs to suit the worker, and encouraging people to return to the labour market by eliminating discrimination and examining arrangements for workers to receive pensions alongside pay. It is hoped that these provisions will allow France to meet the EU target of a 50% older workers' participation rate by 2010.

ON 13 October 2005, after seven months of negotiations, the social partners concluded a new national multisector agreement on the subject of employing older workers. The agreement aims to help older workers to remain in or re-enter the labour market. It is hoped that this will increase labour market participation rates among older workers and also serve to stimulate the French economy. The agreement was formally signed on 10 November by all the main social partner organisations, with the exception of the CGT trade union confederation.

Background

The French social partners have concluded a range of national multisector agreements in recent years on issues such as training and life-long learning in December 2003 (EIRR 358 p.21), diversity and equality at work in March 2004 (EIRR 363 p.30) and individual job classifications, in April 2005 (EIRR 376 p.6). They turned their attention to the subject of older workers in spring 2005, believing that this is a pressing issue.

It is true that France's record for employing older workers is not good: the labour market participation of French workers aged between 55 and 64 is one of the lowest in the EU (a rate of 36.8%, second to Belgium, with 28%, but a long way behind the leader, Sweden, with 68%, and less than the EU average of 42%). Conversely, the average age of the population is increasing and the number of working age people is set to decrease from 2006. These facts, coupled with persistently high unemployment rates in France, mean that the country is facing a major demographic crisis. Increasing the labour market participation of older workers is therefore seen as a vital and major challenge for France. This is also an explicit goal of the EU's Lisbon strategy, which envisages increasing the average labour market participation rate for older workers in the EU to 50% by 2010.

The agreement states that the specific areas on which policymakers should focus when trying to increase the number of older workers in employment include: looking at end-of-career options and pension benefits; trying to match demand for competences with supply - experienced older workers can be useful in plugging skills gaps; and pursuing a sensible pension and social security reform policy.

The agreement itself is split into three main parts:

• how to change attitudes towards older people as members of the workforce;
• how to ensure career development for older workers; and
• how to encourage older workers to return to the labour market.

Changing attitudes

The agreement states that life expectancy, and the number of years a person can enjoy good health, has increased considerably in recent years, noting that a retired person of 60 is increasingly looked on as "young and dynamic". Conversely, a 55-year-old worker is often considered to be relatively old. This has been exacerbated by the fact that the myriad of early retirement schemes on offer lead both employers and employees to expect that a worker of 55 is likely to be leaving the labour market soon. The agreement states that the latter attitude must be changed and that it is important that people challenge their perceptions and attitudes. This should take place at all levels - sector, regional and company - with managers, line managers, employees and employee representatives encouraged to challenge their perceptions of older workers.

Concrete measures could include assessing objectively whether employees can carry out their jobs and making any necessary adjustments to jobs to meet employees' needs. The signatory parties state that changing attitudes needs to be effected by means of a national employment action plan for older workers, with the involvement of the state and the social partners.

Ensuring career development

This section contains a wide range of measures that are aimed at helping older workers develop their careers, focusing in particular on training.

The agreement notes that it is vital to ensure that older workers can keep up with the changing nature of their jobs and are in a position, if necessary, to change to a different type of job. Life-long learning and competence development is therefore a key tool, as is ensuring that individuals can take control of their own career development and that experience gained at work is properly recognised and validated.

Advance management measures

The agreement states that measures should be put into place that provide for advance management of employment and competences, and that this requires the cooperation of the social partners at all levels - sectoral, regional and company. The signatories to this agreement make a commitment to monitor the putting into place of these types of measures and will submit a report after two years.

"Second career half" interviews

All employees already have the right, under the 2003 national agreement on training, to a "second career half" interview once they reach the age of 45, and every five years after that. The aim of this is to give the employee an opportunity to discuss their career direction with their manager. The discussion could include the changing nature of their job, training needs, the current employment situation and their general career development.

It is hoped that this will eliminate any kind of age discrimination at work and also help the employee to plan the second half of their career in accordance with their own wishes and the needs of their company. The interview can be requested by the employee or the employer. The implementation of this provision should be carried out by the local social partners, at branch or company level.

Improving working conditions

The signatory parties state that improving working conditions is a key element in the fight to increase the labour market participation of older workers, as workers have different requirements as they age. In particular, care should be taken to ensure that work is not too physically arduous. Thus, measures need to be put into place to ensure that there is compatibility between a job and the worker's capacity to carry out all the tasks it entails. This will require the development of new evaluation tools and recourse to occupational health services. In addition, employee representatives and health and safety representatives will need to be involved at company level.

Any changes that need to be made to working conditions can be discussed during the "second career half" interview outlined above. These could include issues such as changes to the job content or changes to working hours.

Individual training right

The national agreement on training of December 2003 gives workers an individual right to training. The signatory parties to the 2005 agreement state that workers aged 50 and above will have priority entitlement to training agreed between themselves and their employer during a second half of career interview.

Competence assessment

All employees with at least one year's service with their employer have the right to a competence assessment after 20 years of work, or at all events from their 45th birthday. This must be requested by the employee. Companies must either pay for any actions taken under the employee's continuous training programme or make a contribution to a relevant training fund, either a joint organisation for the management of individual training leave (Opacif) or a sectoral joint body for the financing of vocational training (Opca). These bodies will then draw up annual training budgets and give priority to training measures for workers aged 45 and older. An assessment of this will be made by the signatory parties to this agreement after two years.

Validating work experience

The sector-level social partners will set out the conditions under which work experience can be validated at company level. This can be funded either by companies paying for continuing vocational training or by the relevant Opacif or Opca training finance organisations. These organisations will draw up an annual budget and focus their efforts on work experience validation for the over-45s. This measure will also be assessed after two years.

Passing on knowledge and experience

The agreement states that organising a framework within which knowledge and experience at work can be passed around in the workplace should be a priority for human resource managers. Specific measures can include mentoring and tutoring. Mentors should be volunteers over the age of 45 who have recognised skills and experiences, ideally corresponding to criteria agreed at sectoral level.

Professionalisation period

Under the 2003 agreement on training, all employees have a right to a period of professionalisation. The parties to the 2005 agreement state that the over-45s should have priority of access to these professionalisation periods in order to help them embark on the second half of their career. Details should be set out in sectoral and company agreements.

Information for employee representatives

The agreement states that companies should include information about their workforce by job category and age when providing information to employee representatives as preparation for the annual discussion about the coming year's training plan.

Returning to the labour market

The signatory parties state that job mobility among older workers can only be developed if there is a high degree of fluidity in the labour market. In general, the focus should be on putting measures into place to help companies maintain older workers in employment or to recruit older workers. In particular, all types of discrimination based on age should be prohibited and eliminated.

At the recruitment stage, the sectoral and company-level social partners should devise measures to ensure that there is no age discrimination and that the aptitudes of all candidates are assessed.

Specifically, the signatory parties call on the state employment agency ANPE, the managers' recruitment agency APEC, head hunting and recruitment organisations and temporary employment agencies to make sure that there is no discrimination based on age in any of their recruitment procedures.

The social partners make a commitment to look at measures that could help older workers return to the labour market when they renegotiate the national agreement governing the management of unemployment insurance.

They state that the "professionalisation contract", introduced by the 2003 training agreement should be the main way of helping the over-45s and other vulnerable people to find a way into the labour market. This contract, which can be fixed-term or open-ended, aims to provide people with some kind of work-related qualification. The details of this should be set out by sectoral and company-level agreements, taking into account the needs of companies and employees.

The agreement also makes mention of shared working arrangements (travail à temps partagé), under which companies group together to offer employment to older workers. Details of how this works in practice should be set out in a sectoral agreement or by employer organisations on a regional basis. If such groupings of companies are made up of employers in the same sector, employees taken on by the grouping should be covered by the provisions of the relevant sectoral agreement. If the companies are not in the same sector, the terms and conditions of employees taken on by the grouping should be determined by collective agreement between the companies and representative trade unions.

In the case of workers who are over 57 and who have been unemployed for more than three months or who are covered by a retraining agreement, a fixed-term contract of a maximum of 18 months, renewable once, may be concluded. This will allow the worker to draw full pension rights on retirement at 60.

End of career

The agreement states that workers aged 55 or more may, if they wish, arrange a meeting with their supervisor to talk about arrangements for the final part of their working life. These arrangements can include measures such as the organisation of working time. If the employee so wishes, they may, on agreement with their employer, reduce their working time to a part-time basis. They may also change their working hours, calculating working time on a weekly, monthly or annual basis, by agreement. The agreement urges companies to try to limit the effect of these changed working arrangements on the employees' pension provision, to ensure that they receive as full a pension as possible on retirement.

Other provisions

The signatory parties ask the government to draw up a national action plan to implement the measures contained in this agreement. This plan should be reviewed every two years on a joint basis. Further, an awareness-raising campaign should be undertaken, based on the dissemination of good practice.

The signatory parties also ask the government to look at the interface between employment and pension provision and in particular to iron out any inequalities that stem from current arrangements under which employees may work and draw their pension. Further, they ask the government to consider making any changes to the Delalande contribution that would help older workers find employment. This is a tax paid by employers if they terminate the contracts of older workers and could be seen as a hindrance to the employment of older workers.

Other requests to the government include a plea that legislation implementing the 2003 pension reform, in the area of progressive early retirement, should be issued swiftly. The social partners state that it is crucial to put into place measures that allow people to remain in work for longer, by means of easing the transition between working life and retirement and by improving the pension rights of workers who embark on progressive early retirement.

Implementation

In the six months that follow the coming into force of this agreement, sector-level social partners will enter into negotiations on how to implement its provisions in their sector. The main aim of the agreement is to increase the labour market participation rate of older workers from the current rate of 36.8% to 50% by 2010, in line with EU goals. It aims to achieve this by increasing the rate by two percentage points a year. A first evaluation will take place at the end of 2007.