Can unions promote employability? Senior workers in Israel's collective agreements

Ageism in employment is a problem worldwide. While this is certainly true of the growing non-unionised sector, as this article finds, it is also true of the unionised sector. Whereas unions would seem to be the natural mechanism for protecting senior workers' rights, results of this empirical study of Israeli collective agreements find that this is not true. The majority of collective agreements promote senior citizens' job security and income security, but only a very few promote senior citizens' employability security. The article argues that this is in contrast to the flexicurity approach, which focuses on unionisation and social dialogue to promote employability. The findings reinforce some of the main criticisms on the flexicurity approach showing the limitations of unions and social dialogue in promoting employability security for senior workers. Moreover, the findings reinforce the destructive effects of flexicurity rhetoric-which is not accompanied by real security-on senior workers.