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Présentation. Les politiques de l’emploi au défi de l’âge : regards croisés France-Québec

Charles Tremblay Potvin, Philippe Martin, Sébastien Parent and Gilles Auzero

Les dynamiques d’incitation à l’emploi des jeunes et des aînés par la police des âges au Québec

Pierre Tircher, Leslie Touré Kapo and François L’Italien
This article examines how the Quebec state reconfigures its life-course management through employment policies targeting both youth and older adults. Drawing on the sociology of the life course and the concept of police des âges (age governance), it highlights the pressures exerted on the tripartite life cycle inherited from the welfare state, in favor of strengthening incentives for labor market participation. The analysis of Quebec budgets and bills adopted since 2000 identifies four main dynamics : activation, recommodification, decommodification of older workers, and the regulation of youth labor. These reconfigurations reflect a political will to extend working life and tighten wage norms at both entry and exit from employment, primarily with the aim of regulating the labor market and addressing labor shortages.

Les âges de l’emploi en contexte d’activation des politiques publiques : mise en perspective empirique de deux bassins de main-d’oeuvre au Canada

Frédéric Hanin and Charles Fleury
In the context of an ageing population, Canadian employment policies have sought new labour pools. This is particularly true for young people (aged 15–24) and people nearing the end of their careers (aged 65–74). The analysis uses microdata on time use from Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey (GSS) to better understand the issues related to time use for these two groups. We use latent class methodology to identify three types for young people and five types for those aged 65–74. The discussion addresses issues related to activation policies and collective representation based on age in employment policies in a heterogenous context.

La validité des politiques de retraite obligatoire à l’aune du principe d’égalité en droit canadien

Simon Quilès and Charles Tremblay Potvin
In 1990, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a trilogy of decisions examining the discriminatory nature of certain mandatory retirement policies within the public sector. Since then, such policies have been largely dismantled across Canada, albeit with notable exceptions in specific professions where they remain operative. Nevertheless, this issue continues to raise fundamental questions regarding the conceptualization and interpretation of the right to equality within Canadian constitutional jurisprudence. It further underscores the enduring tensions surrounding the incorporation of insights from the social sciences into legal and normative discourses. Age-based discrimination, in this context, calls for renewed critical scrutiny and is poised to remain a focal point in ongoing reflections on ageism in the workplace. The objective of this text is to assess whether the conditions are now in place for a reassessment of the approach adopted by the Supreme Court in 1990 on this issue, in light of both subsequent case law and social science data relating to the effects of cognitive aging.

Le lanceur d’alerte en cas de maltraitance envers les aînés

Sébastien Parent and Anne-Marie Savard
The possibility for an employee to raise an alert against their employer is essentially based on freedom of expression recognized for all individuals under the Quebec Charter. Since the exercise of this fundamental freedom may conflict with the employee’s duty of loyalty, labour jurisprudence has established restrictive conditions for judging the lawfulness of a public denunciation of the employer. However, the Act to combat maltreatment of seniors and other persons of full age in vulnerable situations, adopted in 2017 and strengthened in 2022, imposes a reporting obligation on any health and social services provider or any professional subject to a code of ethics when they have reasonable grounds to believe that a senior is a victim of maltreatment. This Act also provides protection for employees against any reprisal taken by the employer following such a report. This article sheds light on how these different sets of rules may be reconciled, calling for greater consideration of the fundamental rights of elderly people.

L’emploi des travailleurs âgés en France : de quels droits ?

Philippe Martin
In France, older workers are still relatively underrepresented in the labour market. This situation can today be considered as a form of social exclusion and results primarily from policies implemented during the previous century aimed at encouraging older workers to retire early to make room for younger ones. These policies were developed within a certain legal framework, which was subsequently reformed in a radical manner as part of a genuine paradigm shift towards “active aging.” Since then, we have seen labour law and social security law being heavily exploited in favour of these fluctuating public policies. This invites us to think differently about the issue of the employment of older workers through the prism of fundamental rights : what freedoms and protections do they have, particularly in the face of discrimination, but also in the face of the unequal effects of pension reforms ?

L’état des lieux du droit de la pénibilité au travail en France au regard de l’allongement de l’âge légal de départ à la retraite

Loïc Lerouge
Work arduousness law in France arose from attempts to reform the pension system in the early 2000s. The aim was to compensate for exposure to very difficult working conditions throughout working life by allowing early retirement. Since then, work arduousness law has been steadily weakened and called into question, until it has returned to the forefront with the new attempt to raise the legal retirement age in 2023. The aim is to understand the legal conceptualization of the notion of arduous work in French law and to explore its evolution and the recent challenge to it. These discussions raise the question of the right to retire in good health, taking into account health at work throughout life.

L’âge saisi par le Code du travail français

Tanguy Trévidic
L’âge est un critère central et pourtant peu étudié du droit du travail. Se basant sur les dispositions du Code du travail français, l’auteur propose une systématisation de sa fonction, démontrant comment ce code façonne les parcours professionnels, du jeune au vieil âge. L’auteur explore également l’ambivalence existante entre l’interdiction des discriminations fondées sur l’âge et les différences de traitement autorisées dont il est le substrat. Cet amas de règles charrie quelques incohérences. Sa (re)lecture s’impose pour comprendre que l’âge n’est jamais qu’un chiffre, mais bien un révélateur des paradoxes du droit social contemporain.

L’adaptation du travail à l’âge du salarié : un laboratoire pour penser l’adaptation du travail à l’homme

Jérôme Porta
Comment penser juridiquement l’adaptation du travail à l’homme ? Cette idée fondamentale est au coeur de la construction du droit du travail. Elle naît du besoin pour les sociétés salariales de s’accommoder de l’écart entre le travail idéal et le travail réel. En cela, elle ne se limite pas à la seule question de la santé au travail. Concurremment à la grammaire sanitaire, d’autres grammaires concourent à définir ce qu’adapter le travail à l’homme veut dire. L’adaptation du travail à l’âge offre un laboratoire pour réfléchir à la complexité de cette idée et à la manière dont elle est pensée par le droit du travail. Aux deux bornes de la vie professionnelle, elle n’est pas problématisée de la même manière. Alors que l’adaptation du travail vise à répondre à la particulière vulnérabilité des jeunes au travail, l’adaptation du travail aux travailleurs âgés est d’abord un problème d’emploi et de régulation du marché du travail. Assez logiquement, la hiérarchie des grammaires de l’adaptation n’est pas la même.

L’ancienneté face aux mutations des parcours professionnels : de la fidélisation des travailleurs à une condition de maintien dans l’emploi

Elsa Givois
Seniority, a foundational criterion of French labour relations, has long been perceived as a tool for stabilizing work relationships, guaranteeing greater benefits the longer an employee remains with the company. However, in a context of employment flexibility and non-linear career paths, its traditional function is becoming more fragile. In response to these transformations, seniority is evolving : From a driver of employee retention, it is becoming a protection factor against job loss and a condition for accessing job security mechanisms during career transitions. In distinguishing seniority from age, while analyzing the interactions between the two, it becomes apparent that the criterion of seniority raises issues of equity between workers in stable employment and those in precarious positions, inviting a rethinking of the concept of seniority.

L’âgisme au travail : un compte rendu de recherches comparées et collectives

Éléonore Blondiau, Elsa Givois, Tanguy Trévidic, Doria Vandaële, Émilie Lessard-Mercier, Adeline Medjane, Florence Megninou, Cédrole Niangou, Marc Ntontolo and Marc Zongo

Alexandra Bahary-Dionne, L’accès à la justice au prisme des savoirs profanes. Une enquête sur les médias sociaux, Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 2024, 221 p., ISBN : 9782766303229

Samuel Dinel

Catherine Clement, The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, Oakville (Ontario), Plumleaf Press, 2025, 256 p., ISBN : 9781069093516.

Hélène Piquet

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