We call on candidates and future MEPs to:
Ensure a life-course perspective on work and create inclusive labour markets and put pressure on your government and social partners to:
- Fully implement the Employment Equality Directive 2000/78/EC and promote awareness campaigns on the importance to fight ageism in the workplace; make age-friendly working conditions a reality with a special attention put to flexible end-of-career opportunities;
- Adopt an ambitious directive on work-life balance, including paid carers’ leave for informal carers. Call on the EU Commission and member states to go further, proposing a Council Recommendation on Social Protection and Services for informal carers – most of whom women – that would guarantee access to pension credits, minimum income, health insurance and the maintenance of rights to unemployment benefits to informal carers who have dropped out of the labour market;
- Value older people’s skills and knowledge in the labour market, and recognise the need to facilitate longer working life through more effective action to combat age discrimination in employment and occupational training;
- Seize the potential of intergenerational transfers of knowledge, create jobs which value respectively older and young workers’ skills, and allow both age groups to grow professionally and adapt to the changing labour market;
- Support the implementation of the proposed Council Recommendation on the Social Protection for Workers and Self-Employed, paying attention that gaps in social protection coverage in all forms of employment are effectively closed;
- Scrutinise the implementation of the Council Recommendation on Long-Term Unemployment and support the European Network of Public Employment Services to help older jobseekers including older people in forced inactivity;
- Fund research on sustainable workplaces and durable employability based on up-skilling and life-long learning and promote results across the EU action and initiatives;
- Apply life-cycle approach to the workplace which ensures healthy working environments and fosters interaction, cooperation, transfer knowledge and solidarity between different age groups.
