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Issues associated with retirement in general, and phased transitions into retirement in particular, are taking on increased importance for a variety of reasons. Outlines those reasons, paying particular attention to the practice of mandatory retirement. Presents age dependency ratios for the OECD to highlight the importance of these issues in the context of an ageing and longer‐lived workforce relative to a smaller working age population. Then discusses the prevalence of mandatory retirement in Canada and the USA, and presents empirical evidence from Canada on variables associated with retiring because of mandatory retirement. The Canadian case is of particular interest, because mandatory retirement in Canada has generally not been banned, which is in marked contrast with the situation in the USA, where it has been banned as constituting age discrimination. The public and legal debate over the issue of mandatory retirement has also been extensive in Canada, and this debate may provide information for other countries dealing with the issue. Ends with an assessment of the extent to which mandatory retirement exerts a constraining influence on transitions into retirement. The essential argument is that its constraining impact is not as simple as it may initially appear. To the extent that mandatory retirement is an intricate part of the compensation and human resource function of firms, banning it can have important implications for those functions and, in turn, for transitions into retirement. The complexities of these issues and dramatically increasing old‐age dependency ratios will ensure that this is an area of growing importance for public policy and human resource management.

The purpose of this paper is to take a serious look at the relationship between joint consultation systems at the workplace and employee satisfaction, while at the same time accounting for the (possible) interactions with similar union and management-led high commitment strategies.

Using new, rich data on a representative sample of British workers, the authors identify workplace institutions that are positively associated with employee perceptions of work and relations with management, what in combination the authors call a measure of the “good workplace.” In particular, the authors focus on non-union employee representation at the workplace, in the form of joint consultative committees (JCCs), and the potential moderating effects of union representation and high-involvement human resource (HIHR) practices.

The authors’ findings suggest a re-evaluation of the role that JCCs play in the subjective well-being of workers even after controlling for unions and progressive HR policies. There is no evidence in the authors’ estimates of negative interaction effects (i.e. that unions or HIHR negatively influence the functioning of JCCs with respect to employee satisfaction) or substitution (i.e. that unions or HIHR are substitutes for JCCs when it comes to improving self-reported worker well-being). If anything, there is a significant and positive three-way moderating effect when JCCs are interacted with union representation and high-involvement management.

This is the first time – to the authors’ knowledge – that comprehensive measures of subjective employee well-being are being estimated with respect to the presence of a JCC at the workplace, while controlling for workplace institutions (e.g. union representation and human resource policies) that are themselves designed to involve and communicate with workers.