Brussels. 18 April 2016
Launch of the EU campaign ‘Healthy Workplaces for All Ages’
As an official partner in the newly launched EU campaign ‘Healthy Workplaces for All Ages‘, AGE recalls the key role that age-friendly working conditions and environments play to enable everyone to remain fit to work until retirement age and to enjoy better health after retirement.
“Healthy workplaces for all are needed to lower the impact of demographic ageing on healthcare and pensions systems, ensuring greater fairness and solidarity between generations”, highlights Anne-Sophie Parent, Secretary General of AGE Platform Europe, after the launch of the campaign by the European Commission and the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) on 15th April.
Campaigning for healthy work places is of crucial importance for workers of all ages, as most of them will have to work longer to reach retirement age. Today in Europe only half of workers aged 55-64 are still in employment – with strong gender and regional differences. Among the other half, a significant number of them have been forced to leave the labour market prematurely for health reasons, or for too strenuous working conditions in their current job and lack of measures to support their transition to “lighter” jobs, making them unfit to continue. In addition older workers are most at risk to become long-term unemployed when they lose their jobs, and they have the least access to in-work training and life-long learning. Creating healthy workplaces for all ages includes paying more attention to the reconciliation of work-life balance for workers of all ages, not only parents with young children but also those who care for elderly dependent relatives, as this is an increasing source of stress at work, which is often not addressed in occupational safety and health plans. Many interesting initiatives are being developed and promoted across the EU in the field of age-friendly workplaces to accommodate specific needs of ageing workers. Yet, much more is needed to create proactive healthy workplaces for all ages.
AGE invites employers to take part in the European Covenant on Demographic Change, which aims to bring together local and regional stakeholders to exchange on how age-friendly workplaces can be built. We also invite other organisations to join the EU-OSHA campaign on healthy workplaces, as the campaign will soon open for new campaign partners.
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