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More people are extending their working lives through necessity or choice in the context of increasingly precarious labour markets and neoliberalism. This book goes beyond the aggregated statistics to explore the lived experiences of older people attempting to make job transitions.
Drawing on the voices of older workers in a diverse range of European countries, leading scholars explore job redeployment and job mobility, temporary employment, unemployment, employment beyond pension age and transitions into retirement.
This book makes a major contribution and will be essential reading within a range of disciplines, including social gerontology, management, sociology and social policy.
, due to rising state pension ages and reduced/restricted access to early retirement options and disability and unemployment benefits in many countries. Likewise, the role of the state in delivering retirement incomes is declining, with the private sector taking a more significant pensions role and inequalities likely to rise as a result. The progressive shift from defined benefit to defined contribution occupational pensions in the UK and other countries has been a profound change ( Lain, 2016 ). In such schemes the individual, not an employer, now bears the risk
turn with respect to pensions, disability and unemployment benefits, with measures to individualise or privatise the risk of income sufficiency in retirement. Perhaps the most unexpected patterns … observed … is the distance that Sweden and Germany have travelled down the neoliberal path’. The question of why there has been this partial convergence between different welfare states is complex. However, it is important to note that a number of challenges to welfare states have intensified over recent decades, including globalization, enhanced global competition and
). Concurrent with the ongoing debate on extended working life, research shows that older employees experience a growing discontent with work demands and the nature of work ( Smeaton and White, 2016 ). This is in harmony with studies of work factors in relation to the employment participation of older workers, where heavy physical work demands have consistently been associated with disability retirement ( Lund and Villadsen, 2005 ; Pohrt and Hasselhorn, 2015 ). It is also argued that work ability declines with age, especially in jobs with physically demanding tasks, and that
-term changes affecting working life were creating a range of instabilities in the transition from employment. Researchers began to draw a distinction between ‘retirement’ on the one side, and ‘early exit’ on the other. The former referred to entry into a publicly provided old-age pension scheme; the latter, early withdrawal from employment, supported through unemployment, disability or associated benefits ( Kohli et al 1991 ). Rather than employment ending at a fixed chronological age, there was now a measure of ambiguity about when working life ended and retirement began
Introduction As we saw in Chapter 1 , in recent years financial pressures to work longer have increased considerably in the UK, with state pension ages rising fast and ‘working age benefits’ for unemployment and disability being further residualized. Mandatory retirement ages have also been abolished, in 2011, meaning that older people now have the theoretical right to continue working. It is important to note that these changes arguably reflect a longer-term political turn towards neoliberalism, the ‘political rationality’ that links ‘a reduction in
traditionally been a secure job, although it can take time to gain a permanent contract. Pay levels were reduced for new teachers recruited after the 2008 global financial crisis. Transitions to retirement for teachers Teachers in second-level schools recruited before 2004 (most teachers participating in this study) may retire voluntarily at any time from age 60 onwards. There is provision for early retirement (from age 55, with 35 years’ service) and for retirement on disability grounds subject to minimum service and medical verification. Those recruited after 2004
Lahelma , E. ( 2015 ) ‘ Coping with unemployment among journalists and managers ’, Work, Employment and Society , 29 ( 5 ): 720 – 37 . Riach , K. and Loretto , W. ( 2009 ) ‘ Identity work and the unemployed worker: age, disability and the lived experience of the older unemployed ’, Work, Employment and Society , 23 ( 1 ): 102 – 19 . Schmiz , A. ( 2013 ) ‘ Migrant self-employment between precariousness and self-exploitation ’, Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization , 13 ( 1 ): 53 – 74 . Sennet , R. ( 2007 ) The Culture of the New
