Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

external structural determinants which necessitate the firm to reduce personnel, resp. by a
stable employment situation.
The decision to stay is in most parts shaped by the calculation to maintain the current
standard of living (and thus indirectly by pension reforms) and by high job satisfaction, and
is taken more often by men than by women. The firm experts also observed that risen job
intensity and faster pace of changes diminish job satisfaction, which is then translated into
early exit. Also the inconsistent movements of the legislator and partially backing off from
unpopular reform elements moves retirees-to-be to grasp the still existing early exit options.
Works councils play in the process of individual decision-making a role as agitators for
early exit. Depending on their relations with the management, they do it either with the
intention to do older workers something good (e.g. by conducting calculations what they
gain and what they use by choosing either the option of early exit or prolonged
employment), or in order to smooth the process of personnel reductions. In the latter case,
the works council agitates in favour of early exit either from the position of co-manager, the
representative of interests of (younger) workers without pension entitlements, or, lastly, as a
sub-ordinate “organ of the management” (Kotthoff 1995: 550).
The qualitative panel proved useful with regard to tracking the change of retirement
preferences over time, as by the time of the first interview, neither firms nor interviewees
have had fully realised the impact of pension reforms.
4.2.8. Impact of Legislative Changes
In this chapter, I will assess whether firms in my sample have responded to institutional
changes within the framework of pension policy and passive and active labour market
policy. On that basis, I will test hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 6. The reform elements
concerned will be any changed rules of participation in the early retirement scheme, the 59
rule, disability pensions, social selection in case of mass lay-offs, retirement ages, antidiscrimination
rulings and incentives to hire or to qualify an older worker (see overview in
Table 1 in chapter 2. and in section 3.2.). Such reforms were taken into consideration which
had come into effect before the first or the second interview.
The relevant dimensions for the analysis are defined with regard to the goal of
prolongation of working life which can be reached by the recruitment of older workers and
by their retention, and which I assume to be the intention of the legislator when passing the
reform. Thus, on the one side of the continuum would be internalisation of older workers,
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