Conditions for maintaining ageing operators at work - a case study conducted at an automobile manufacturing plant

This is a case study on work/ageing relations in an automobile manufacturing company, where demographic trends and the work organisation determine the conditions under which ageing operators can work in repetitive tasks under tight time constraints. The methodology used is based on a comparison of different age operators at their regular workstation and in a new job, during the training process. The older workers appear to develop health-preserving strategies of work while achieving production goals. The possibility of setting up such strategies depends on the job characteristics; More generally, this case study allows us to better understand why some older workers are excluded from certain workstations, and thus why "polyvalency" or job rotation decreases with age. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.