Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

given branch (Table 18), which demonstrates that firms in my sample are typical cases and
many German firms at that time had to grapple with adjustment problems.
The interest in early exit was motivated by the wish to downsize personnel in a
„socially acceptable way“, to sustain or lower the given average age of the workforce, or to
clear vacancies for younger persons. The perceived or assumed lower aptitude of older
persons was the reason for releasing them only in singular cases.
4.2.7. Perceived Exit Preferences of Older Workers
This section will depict the general orientation of older workers on early vs. late exit,
and analyse in a second step how those preferences are influenced by legislative changes.
The discussion will be based on the assessment of workers´ retirement preferences by the
interviewed experts. Afterwards, hypothesis 4 will be tested.
The firm experts (chairpersons of works councils and personnel managers) were asked
whether they have perceived any change in retirement preferences of older workers in the
last years, especially at times when a legislative change took place (the raising of retirement
ages for the old-age pension after ATZ in 2004, the introduction of pension deductions
starting from 1997, the looming termination of ATZ, the raising of the standard retirement
age to 67).
The basic finding is that the interest of firms in early retirement coincides with the
interest of workers in pre-retirement age to cease work and gain free time while at the same
time receiving a wage replacement which guarantees status maintenance. The early
retirement and pre-retirement schemes offered by the analysed firms in most cases allow to
maintain the standard of living prior to early exit. Another motive of older workers,
especially in physically burdening positions or in positions characterised by a high work
intensity, is to escape the “pain of work” and get relief in case of health impairments
(Bäcker/Naegele 1993: 148; Wurm et al. 77-78) which confirms the pull and the push thesis
of early retirement (see Fig. 2 in chapter 2.).
Older workers in all but one firm (which will be presented as exceptional case at the
end of this section) were interested in an exit before their 60 th birthday. This orientation is
closely linked to legislative and firm-level options for early exit and shows the impact of
institutional arrangements at statutory and company level on shaping life courses (Mayer
2004: 162; Kohli/Rein 1991: 18ff). In firms which release their older workers via a
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