Intergenerational Solidarity in the Workplace

Starting from the main criticalities that young and old people meetin contemporary labor markets, this article analyses the principle of solidarity betweengenerations at work, in light of a multidisciplinary (especially sociological)literature. This offers different conceptual lenses for understanding complexrelationships in workplaces. They provide different ways to understand micro-levelinterpersonal relations and macro-level structural forces and the interactions betweenthem, arriving to define which kind of solidarity may be realistically proposed incontemporary labor markets. Then, intergenerational relations are briefly collocated inEuropean Union debate aiming to promote a cohesive society. In the second part, fourcountry cases are presented to demonstrate how the matter of intergenerational relationshas influenced recent labor reforms. Following van der Veen, Yerkes, and Achterberg, whofound differences in the choice of justice principles and in the level of solidaritypreferred by social groups living in different welfare regimes, to reduce the complexityof the analysis, countries belonging to the same welfare regime have been chosen.Finally, measures presented are critically discussed in the more general context ofEuropean labor market and social welfare crisis