Work accommodations are generally understood to refer to individual solutions for older and disabled employees that have been tailored to their specific situation within a workplace. This article, however, argues that there is potential for collective employment relations to motivate and enable social partners to develop a role in implementing reasonable accommodations and supporting older and disabled employees in the labour market. Focusing on industrial relations and work accommodation systems in Estonia, Poland and Hungary, the potential role that social partners could play in creating more inclusive workplaces is explored. This is done by reference to the findings from an action research project that brought together social partners to discuss ways in which practices in providing work accommodations could help better to integrate underutilised sources of labour in these three countries. The industrial relations regimes in the three countries have potentially enabling characteristics that could facilitate work accommodations. Current knowledge of the work accommodation process and the integration of this issue into the collective employment relations agenda, however, needs further improvement.

The under-utilization of the labour of disabled and older people is a problem across the European Union (EU) but is most pronounced in Central and Eastern European (CEE) member states, where labour shortages are greatest. This presents a puzzle that is explored with reference to a project with social partners from Estonia, Hungary and Poland, the objective of which was to stimulate debate and actions around the role of industrial relations actors in facilitating work accommodations for disabled and older people. After establishing the extent of the demographic labour crisis in these countries, the policy tools being employed to address it are scrutinized and found wanting. A variety of factors are identified as having contributed to debate in this area: historical legacy, social policy path-dependency, social partner identity and agency, a ‘dead letter’ approach to EU policies, and the limited role of civil society organizations. We examine the potential of the concept of sustainable work, more commonly found in Northern Europe, to influence alternative approaches to the employment of disabled and older people in countries where state, labour and employment relations differ.