Demographic Change

The European Member States are living a period of demographic change, causing an immediate impact both on the structure of the labour force and of the companies. In addition, specific changes are to be introduced to the industrial relations in the Member States, inter alia, by the alteration of the transition from work to retirement. The global economic crises may lead to changes in industrial relations, which today hardly are predictable.

Within this framework the project Good Old Europe aims to improve the knowledge on industrial relations in Europe, to raise the awareness of specific issues for elderly workers, to discover innovative approaches of the industrial relations sensitive to demographic change as well as examples of promising practice designing ageing appropriate industrial relations, to promote the exchange thereof among the partners on the level of experts and to mainstream the results to the wider public of stakeholders.

The project Good Old Europe
will focus on the following thematic areas and topics:

• Strengthening the employment of elderly people (social partners‘ and public support of elderly workers, promotion of the employability of elderly people, age-sensitive ways of working, health and work, sustainability of life work force, age and sports, health aspects of industrial relations for elderly workers, age-sensitive marketing and employment);
• Transition from work to retirement and extending working life period (design of age-sensitive and intergenerational justice of industrial relations, elderly people’s welfare, part-time work models for elderly people, early retirement schemes,
  combined models of work and retirement);

Ageing-appropriate work

• Ageing appropriate work (age-adequate ergonomics of the job, elderly workers and health, health promotion in industrial relations, labour relations and rehabilitation, sabbatical for elderly workers, combined models of employment work and civil volunteering);
• Knowledge management and industrial relations (life-long learning for elderly people and industrial relations, age competences, high-quality activities for elderly people, cross-generational learning and work, cross-generational teams);
• Demographic change and migration (mobility and age, elderly migrants, age and migration).

Implementing a comparative view, on a scientific basis, future-oriented approaches in designing industrial relations within the specifically identified areas will be catalogued, classified and evaluated. Scientific and comparative methods as well as its transferability will be discussed within a transnational network of experts. The results will be portrayed, discussed and disseminated in the context of a symposium. The development of a catalogue, bilingual (original and English language) including international peers’ comments on transferability is designed to facilitate follow-up of the experts’ discussion as well as sustainability of good practice for the partners‘ organisations and the interested European public. The project does not only support the debate on an experts’ level, but also promotes the networking of stakeholders in the context of a scientific discourse and addresses demographic change supporting active ageing.

The project Good Old Europe has started in December 2009 and will finish in November 2010.

Further Information

Berufsbildungswerk ENAIP e. V.

Olgastrasse 57a
70182 Stuttgart
phone: +49 711 60174620
phone: +49 711 60174625
fax: +49 711 60174660
web: www.enaip.de
Mr. Norbert Kreuzkamp

Eberhard Karls University

Institute for Political Science
Chair for Political Economy and Comparative Policy Analysis
Prof. Dr. Josef Schmid
Melanchthonstrasse 36
72074 Tübingen
phone: +49 7071 2974506
phone: +49 7071 2978370
fax: +49 7071 292417
web: www.uni-tuebingen.de
Prof. Dr. Josef Schmid
Dr. Harald Kohler