‘Commute, work, die’ should be retired

WHATEVER the slogans wielded by striking workers angry at Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform might say — such as “commute, work, die” — the French are anything but lazy. The country’s unemployment rate is at its lowest in years, and France has a greater share of 25-to-54-year-olds in work than the European Union average, or indeed the US. The pace of job creation is above pre-pandemic levels.

Where France punches below its weight, however, is in its share of workers over 55. Macron wants to raise that number but not just by pushing the retirement age to 64 from 62; he wants to prod companies to hire more people in their 50s and 60s, setting targets for diversity by age. Similar steps have been taken elsewhere, such as when UK firms including Aviva Plc and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc pledged in 2017 to hire more over-50s. The French version looks distinctly less touchy-feely, with the threat of fines if companies don’t play ball.

If Macron is tying the idea of tougher age quotas to pension reform, it’s also as a sop to critics and unions who say lifting the pension age will worsen unemployment as older workers get laid off before retirement.

Expanding the labour pool is an issue of great economic significance — potentially even more so than the estimated 17.7 billion euros (US$19 billion) the Macron administration hopes the reform will unlock. If France lifted its over-55s employment rate by around 10 percentage points to 66 per cent (the G7 average) by 2032, that might mean an extra 825,000 workers and almost 50 billion euros in extra gross domestic product by one estimate.

This isn’t just a French thing — PwC has suggested the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as a whole could add US$3.5 trillion to GDP if it lifted over-55s’ employment share to 78 per cent — but France is a clear retirement outlier.

In principle, publishing more data at the corporate level would be a good way to shine a light on divergent national and company practices, beyond the basic hike to the retirement age if the reform goes through. There does seem to be a gap worth tackling: Luxury goods behemoth Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy SE has a higher share of staff aged 50-59 in France than elsewhere, but has more over-60s working at the firm in the US than in its home market. Transport company Transdev Group SA has 20-30 per cent of drivers over 60 in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the US; in France, it’s 12 per cent, according to France Inter radio.

But just as raising the pension age feels like a blunt tool for today’s workers watching today’s retirees enjoy wealthier and healthier twilight years, quotas won’t fix the deeper issues below the surface.

If the French aren’t thrilled about working longer, it may be because many feel like they’ve already paid their dues. French executives are the world’s worst workaholics, a BUPA survey found, which might be one reason why few retirees are misty-eyed about going back. Perceptions of cost and skills gaps with younger workers also encourage ageism: A 2015 Eurobarometer survey found 75 per cent of French managers believed a job candidate older than 55 would be at a disadvantage. Any silver quota will likely be shrugged off by key sectors like technology, where 40 is the new “old” and where young coders are seen as competitive advantages.

What should really happen instead is a re-evaluation of the “three-stage life” — education, work and retirement — that is proving resistant to change, even as the prospect of living to 100 becomes less outlandish.

Instead of tacking on concepts like mentoring to one’s late-career life, retraining should happen more regularly (maybe every decade). Instead of associating older workers with high health costs, it’s worth following the example of BMW’s “2017 production line”, in which a small investment in physical well-being — wooden floors, magnifying lenses, adjustable chairs — boosted productivity. And the carrot of a more flexible transition between work and retirement, such as by combining part-time work with partial pension payments, or by sharing one older hire between small businesses, might be better than the stick of quotas.

This may seem like a sideshow next to the core issue of the retirement age that has put hundreds of thousands of protesters out on the street, and that has Macron’s opponents in parliament pressuring the government to back down. Ideally, his reform would be made fairer and more acceptable by sharing the financial burden between companies and retirees, not just workers. But the reality of demographic and economic decline means that the long-term question of silver workers — and the effectiveness of quotas — is the far bigger one. “Commute, work, die” should be retired. BLOOMBERG