Early Retirement Schemes in France, 1970–2000: A Disruption of Solidarity

Between 1970 and 2000, the transition to retirement in France was marked by the widespread implementation of early retirement schemes. These early exits from working life were made possible by various measures designed to respond to rising joblessness. The considerable scale of early retirement schemes blurred the respective rationales of retirement and the fight against unemployment. Without claiming to exhaustive coverage of this topic, this paper highlights various aspects of these disruptions. Employers treated their older employees ambivalently, public authorities adopted unprecedented positions, while trade unions sought to adapt. The emergence of these measures sparked new debates within companies. Among employees, this early retirement wave blurred the value of seniority in the workplace and disrupted certain forms of solidarity between employees, between generations, between men and women, and between victims of redundancy plans. As early retirement schemes were scaled back, they left deep scars on the French working world.