“Take it or leave it: flexible working-time arrangements and the synchronization of business cycle and life cycle”

While the life course perspective has often been neglected in labour market and social policy research, it is now very much – but sometimes implicitly - present in European labour market policy. The grown interest in education and training within the concepts of “lifelong learning” and of an “investive social policy” are indicators of this perspective. The goals of the Lisbon strategy to increase the labour market participation of older workers and the actual retirement age (Barcelona and Stockholm targets, see Commission of the European Communities 2003) have also increased the need to focus on work biographies, on the long term employability of workers and on sustainability in the working world. Accordingly the European Directives for the national action plans explicitly state: “this requires developing comprehensive national strategies based on a life course approach” (Council of the European Commission 2003, paragraph 15).

While a general framework for the life course perspective can be set on the national level (e.g. by adjusting legal arrangements), other actors also play a decisive role when it comes to the implementation of the life course perspective:the social partners can add on the legal framework by regulations in collective agreements, and it is in particular the company that determines issues that are decisive for the life-course perspective of workers, such as working-time arrangements and training options.