Read the text below which is entitled “The future of work” in
order to answer questions 21 to 24.

The future of work
Source: Newsweek
Jan 30th, 2006 (Adapted)

Many of the rich world’s notions about old age are dying.
While the streamlining effects of international competition
are focusing attention on the need to create and keep good
jobs, those fears will eventually give way to worries about
the growing shortage of young workers. One unavoidable
solution: putting older people back to work, whether they
like it or not. Indeed, cutting-edge European economies
like those of Finland and Denmark have already raised
their retirement ages, reversing the postwar trend toward
ever-earlier retirement. Others are under severe pressure
to follow suit, as both the European Commission and the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) have recently warned their members that their
future prosperity depends on a growing contribution from
the elderly.

This erosion of one of the cornerstones of the good
life – relaxed golden years – has not gone unremarked. In
the last year, Belgium, Italy and France have all been hit
with massive protests against pension reforms that would,
among other things, have raised the retirement age.

Companies in the rich world are confronted with a rapidly
ageing workforce. Nearly one in three American workers
will be over 50 by 2012, and America is a young country
compared with Japan and Germany. China is also ageing
rapidly, thanks to its one-child policy. This means that
companies will have to learn how to manage older workers
better.
Most companies are remarkably ill-prepared. There was a
fl icker of interest in the problem a few years ago but it was
snuffed out by the recession. The management literature
on older workers is a mere molehill compared with the
mountain devoted to recruiting and retaining the young.
Companies are still stuck with an antiquated model for
dealing with ageing, which assumes that people should
get pay rises and promotions on the basis of age. They
have dealt with the burdens of this model by periodically
"downsizing" older workers or encouraging them to take
early retirement. This has created a dual labour market for
older workers, of cosseted insiders on the one hand and
unemployed or retired outsiders on the other.
But this model cannot last. The number of young people,
particularly those with valuable science and engineering
skills, is shrinking. And governments are raising retirement
ages and making it more diffi cult for companies to shed
older workers, in a desperate attempt to cope with their
underfunded pension systems.
Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition [adapted]

It has become clear that preventive diplomacy is only one
of a class of actions that can be taken to prevent disputes from
turning into armed conflict. Others in this class are preventive
deployment of military and(or) police personnel; preventive
humanitarian action, for example, to manage and resolve a
refugee situation in a sensitive frontier area; and preventive
peace-building, which itself comprises an extensive menu of
possible actions in the political, economic and social fields,
applicable especially to possible internal conflicts.
All these preventive actions share the following
characteristics: they all depend on early warning that the risk of
conflict exists; they require information about the causes and
likely nature of the potential conflict so that the appropriate
preventive action can be identified; and they require the consent
of the party or parties within whose jurisdiction the preventive
action is to take place.

The element of timing iscrucial. The potential conflict
should be ripe for the preventive action proposed. Timing is also
an important consideration in peace-making and peace-keeping.
The prevention, control and resolution of a conflict is like the
prevention, control and cure of a disease. If treatment is
prescribed at the wrong moment in the evolution of a disease, the
patient does not improve, and the credibility of both the treatment
and the physician who prescribed it is compromised.

Internet: (with adaptations).