Abstract

This article discusses the condition of workers over 55. They make up 20% of Italian workers and are identified by Italy’s Recovery and Resilience Plan as fragile and vulnerable. In a context of weakness in active employment and training policies, the measures activated in recent years have mainly incentivized pre-retirement of the over-55s, to reduce the impact of the reform that increased the retirement age. This has helped companies in crisis situations and corporate restructuring to reduce labor costs or encourage generational turnover. Less attention, on the other hand, has been paid to how to facilitate the adaptation of work to workers’ abilities. The results of a case study carried out among manufacturing firms in the province of Bergamo show a gap between objectives aimed at raising the employment rate and enhancing the value of mature labor, and concrete solutions that instead end up favoring the expulsion of older workers. This course of action is increasingly less compatible with the demographic transformations taking place