Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

Germany and Poland were chosen as comparative cases because the early retirement
trend developed in the same period in both countries and in both countries, attempts at
reverting this trend were undertaken since the mid-1990s, but with divergent outcomes –
while Germany has accomplished the Stockholm target in 2007, Poland ranks second-last
(EC 2008: 32). As regards the average retirement age (not: average exit age from the labour
market), in Germany, it underwent an U-shaped development since the 1970s and was 63.4
years in 2006, while in Poland, it has experienced a downward development since 1978 and
is stagnating since 1992 at a low level (56.6 years). 4
I was interested in the reasons for the divergent development with regard to the
employment rate and the average retirement age in both countries across time, what chances
there are that policies for the prolongation of working life will be more successful in the
future, and what policies work in which context. Another research interest concerned the
role of companies for arriving at those results.
Several moderators may account for the divergent development in Germany and Poland.
Poland represents an economic system transforming from plan to market, which resulted
in a rapid change of power structures in companies in the process of commercialisation 5 and
privatisation, in firm closures and divisions, while Germany represents a stable market
economy. Consequently, firms in Poland were forced to quickly adapt to new conditions of
competition, productivity, privatisation and the need to reduce personnel. Moreover, job
profiles in Poland were subject to large changes – demand for unqualified labour was
falling, former knowledge was devalued and workers had to develop a new work morale
(Socha/Sztanderska 1991: 2; Wiśniewski 2002: 323, 334). What follows, are lower chances
for older Polish workers to reach the standard retirement age on the job.
A similarity between both countries is the long-term trend towards higher
unemployment rates. In Poland, this development originated from the systemic
transformation. In Germany, a starting point for the rise in unemployment rates was the
reunification and the job losses in the secondary sector. An important difference between
Poland and Germany is the intensity of those changes. In Germany, the unemployment rate
was slowly rising after unification to reach the peak in 1997 with 9 per cent. In Poland,
unemployment rates were rising quickly after the transition with a peak of 19.5 per cent as
4 At the time when I started my study in 2004, the halt to the downward trend in employment rates of older
workers in Germany was already visible but not how it will develop in the medium term.
5 Commercialisation is the transformation of state-owned companies into ´one-person companies of the
Treasury´, the pre-stage before privatisation.
4