Mobile Edition
Print
Get the Mag
Weekly UpdatesAs a result of demographic and economic changes (aging of the population--and thus of the labour force, the anticipated shortage of experienced workers, the rise in the proportion of the economically inactive in relation to the economically active population, and actuarial pressures on both private and public retirement plans), workers aged 50 and older in most OECD countries are currently being encouraged to remain in or return to the labour force. To achieve such an objective, many countries have raised the official retirement age; others have limited certain early exit schemes (OECD, 2006); and still others, including Canada, have changed their policies very little, except to make the eligibility criteria for public pension plans more flexible (Myles, 2006). Due to these policies or perhaps to the recent economic upswing, employment rates for workers aged 55 and older are increasing in Western countries. This represents a reversal of the trend towards early exit from the labour force that was seen in most industrialized countries from 1975 to 1995 (1) (Guillemard, 2003; Gauthier and Asselin, 2006). Out of interest or necessity, more than one in five Canadians (22%) who retired between 1992 and 2002 at the age of 50 or older have returned to paid work (2) (Schellenberg, Turcotte and Ram, 2005).
Underlying these data is a little studied issue: the question of the quality of these jobs. In particular, nearly half of all jobs held by Canadian workers aged 55 and older involve non-standard work (3) that is, work other than permanent, full-time employment for one employer, which had been the norm in the post-war period (Vosko, 2006: 25). This phenomenon can theoretically be interpreted in different, and even contradictory, ways. On the one hand, it can be linked to the precariousness often associated with non-standard work, especially for the most vulnerable groups in society, particularly women, youth and visible minorities (Cranford, Vosko and Zukewich, 2003a, 2003b). In the case that concerns us here, it can be seen as an alternative to exclusion from the labour market, but as a precarious alternative, characterized by low pay and little social protection. On the other hand, it can be associated with the phenomenon of changing end-of-career trajectories, which has been highlighted by a number of authors (Marshall and Mueller, 2002; Hardy, 2002; Crespo, 2004). In these new types of trajectories, retirement is less often a clearly defined event than a transition phase or process that may extend over several years, characterized by a combination of activities, including one or more transitional or "bridge" jobs, a number of which correspond to non-standard occupational statuses (Singh and Verma, 2001; Clark and Quinn, 2002; Lesemann and Beausoleil, 2004). This combination of activities results in a mix of work-related income, private or public pension income, and other types of income: a mix that may enable individuals to mitigate and even avoid precariousness, or, in other words, to gain more income security as they reach retirement age (Rein and Turner, 1997; Mo, Legare and Stone, 2006).
This article focuses on the situations and trajectories of 22 workers who lost or left a standard wage or salary job in the turbulent decade of the 1990s and then undertook some form of non-standard employment. Based on qualitative research, it raises the question of whether non-standard jobs held by workers aged 50 and older can be categorized as precarious and, if this is the case, to identify the dimensions, objective and subjective, of this precariousness. While the scientific literature leads to anticipate a variety of situations, the article highlights, through the analysis of the previous occupational trajectory and of the characteristics of the repositioning job, the conditions associated with the most and the least precarious scenarios. Besides the fact that little light has been shed on this topic to date, the study of the conditions associated with non-standard employment in this age group is relevant because it allows us to simultaneously examine two phenomena now well underway in Canada and elsewhere in the West: ongoing labour market transformations, and changes in public policies on retirement and retirement income.
Our article is divided into four parts. The first summarizes elements in the scientific literature relating to non-standard employment, recent developments in public and private retirement policies, and changing end-of-career trajectories. The second sets out the research issues and methodology. The third and fourth parts present the results: the third describes three profiles ranging from the least to the most precarious; and the fourth pinpoints elements in the respondents' trajectories that favoured their repositioning within a particular profile.
Literature Review
The proportion of non-standard jobs has been rising since the mid-1970s. In 2003, this type of employment affected about a third of the labour force in both Canada (Cranford, Vosko and Zukewich, 2003a) and Quebec (Bernier, Vallee and Jobin, 2003). Some authors (Chaykowski, 2005; Vosko, 2006) conclude that a large proportion of such jobs are precarious; that is, they are characterized by a low degree of job certainty, little control over the labour process, lack of regulatory protection and social benefits, and low earnings. The most precarious forms of employment (especially temporary work and own-account self-employment) are also those that have shown the strongest growth. Non-standard employment involves a great diversity of conditions, associated with variables such as gender and ethnicity (Kalleberg et al., 1997; Cranford, Vosko and Zukewich, 2003a, 2003b); occupation, itself associated with the worker's level and type of skills (Kalleberg, 2003); industrial sector and job characteristics, particularly union coverage (Kalleberg et al., 1997); and, finally, labour market institutions (McManus, 2000) and forms of work organization of companies that use non-standard work (Lautsch, 2002). Women, as well as young people and visible minorities, are overrepresented in the most precarious forms of employment (Vosko, 2006).
Non-standard work is very widespread among older workers: in 2003, nearly half of all working Canadians (47% of men and 49% of women) aged 55 and older were either permanent part-time workers or temporary full-time or part-time workers, or were self-employed (with or without employees) full-time or part-time (Vosko, 2006). But we know little about the conditions in which this non-standard work is carried out, and the available data tend to support the idea of a great diversity of situations (Singh and Verma, 2001; D'Amours, 2003). In fact, in order to assess the real impact of a person in this age group taking on this type of non-standard employment, we have to consider not only the characteristics of the job itself, but also the possibility of combining it with other income sources, especially public or private pension income. Indeed, since 1987 in Canada (1984 in Quebec), individuals can receive CPP/QPP benefits as of age 60, although at a reduced monthly level. (4) Income from employment-based pension plans is often accessible as of age 55; and in the 1980s and 1990s, early retirement schemes made it easier for workers aged 50 and older to exit the labour force.
Access to private or public pension benefits is likely to counterbalance the precariousness of non-standard employment for older workers. But one must distinguish between the most fortunate workers--for whom a continuous trajectory within a large private or public corporation may enable them to receive employer-sponsored registered pension plan (RPP) income and to contribute to RRSPs--and less fortunate workers, who have to make do with CPP/QPP benefits, which permit a replacement rate of at most 25% of the average salary (Myles and Street, 1995; Theret, 2002). Moreover, in the spheres of both retirement and work, gender predicts different outcomes: indeed, women's more often discontinuous trajectories, the sectors in which they are concentrated, and their lower income levels than men's all mean that their retirement income is lower than men's (McDonald, 2006).
Finally, end-of-career trajectories are changing and are moving away from the tri-partite model in which each of the stages--education, work and retirement--occurred at a set age that was the same for everyone. Based on the work of Marshall and Clarke (1998), Marshall and Mueller (2002) have identified, in addition to the three traditional periods, one transition period between an individual's education and career, and a second transition period between his or her career job and retirement, which involves training, part-time work and bridge jobs. The work of Crespo (2004) has illustrated this change in end-of-career trajectories by showing that the recent increase in the employment rate (which rose from 48.1% to 54.3% from 1995 to 2002) for Quebec men aged 55 to 64 is mainly attributable to workers whose jobs were recent (held for less than ten years) and solely attributable to individuals who combined work income with retirement income. Contrary to what one might expect, these were full-time jobs (which was undoubtedly due to the favourable economic situation), but it is impossible to determine whether they were statutorily permanent or temporary jobs. Furthermore, in the United States, where between 30% and 35% of men and between 45% and 60% of women in this age group opted for bridge jobs (Quinn, 1999), various authors have highlighted the fact that many of these bridge jobs involve part-time work or self-employment (Quinn, 1999; Rix, 2001 ; Clark and Quinn, 2002).
A review of the American literature by Lesemann and Beausoleil (2004) reveals the diversity of end-of-career trajectories. Based on a typology proposed by Reich (1992) and later used by Dubet (2003), these authors identify three subgroups of older workers: "competitive," "precarious" and "protected." "Competitive" workers, who are in the minority, are well educated and highly qualified. They hold well-paid post-career jobs, but these jobs do not always include social protection. Their prior occupations, which had called upon skills that were more intellectual than physical, had allowed them to use their qualifications and enjoy considerable autonomy, which they continue to do in their post-career jobs. "Precarious" workers, who account for the overwhelming majority of older workers discussed in the literature, hold relatively unskilled and low-paid post-career jobs. Poorly educated, they had held low-status jobs where they had been under a high level of control, which does not necessarily mean that they had experienced precariousness in their career jobs. They generally return to work for economic reasons, that is, because they do not have enough material resources to retire. "Protected" workers are similar to "competitive" workers in their high level of education, but differ because their career jobs were in sectors where they had good pension funds and, thus, favourable retirement conditions. These workers tend to opt for complete withdrawal from the labour force as soon as they are materially able and institutionally entitled to retire; if some do return to work, it is often in marginal forms of employment that testify more to a search for meaning than to a need for employment income.
FEED