Age and changes in work: Causes and contrasts

Abstract

As authors Marshall and Marshall write, company-based human resources policies may be influenced by many factors, such as changing demographics, global economic changes, technological change, and ideologies governing corporate restructuring. Alternatively, these factors may have little direct influence on policy at the company level. In this article, five Canadian case studies, two of them matched in the United States, are drawn upon to investigate company policies influencing the lives of older workers and factors associated with exit from employment. The cases cover the following sectors: the insurance industry, the garment industry, steel manufacturing, telecommunications, gas transmission and petrochemical manufacturing. Formal policy attention to demographic change or the ageing workforce was rare in the companies studied. However, company policies adopted for a variety of reasons had important consequences for their older workers and for age relations in the company. The fact or threat of corporate downsizing pervaded most work contexts, but different approaches taken by the companies had distinct outcomes for working life and the subsequent demographic structure of the firm. While demographic, technological, or economic factors can have important influences on company policies affecting older workers, none of these factors is highly deterministic in its effects. Policy decisions at the company level take these factors into account in widely differing ways.