Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

training is provided for persons „towards whom the firm has long-term plans“, mostly for
management trainees. Career development is provided only for new recruits with
knowledge of foreign languages. The reasons are high costs of further training and the wish
to secure a long pay-back period of respective investments. Due to this, the firm seldom
includes older workers in qualification measures. However, the shop steward partly blames
it on the lower willingness of older workers to learn new things. He also criticised the
focusing of training on persons with already broad knowledge, instead of qualifying
machine operators with only basic educational level, as – in his opinion – all workers
should speak English.
The internalisation strategy – workers without needed qualifications are trained and
retained in the firm – is followed by five firms; two of them (Firm PL-9, Firm PL-10, Firm
PL-14 and Firm PL-16) can be labelled ´good practice´ (see Box 7 for one example).
Box 7: Good practice in further training in Firm PL-9
In the utility company Firm PL-9, the shop steward of the largest trade union committee (TU-1) reported that
older workers in the firm are not only trained on equal terms as younger workers, but even forced to
participate in training. In my view, this denoted a positive aspect, but the shop steward also criticised the trend
towards broad specialisation and performing multiple tasks, as it bore a risk of occupational accidents. He
gave an example: Instead of supervising 2,000 valves, he is able to learn only the servicing of 1,300 ones, and
therefore fails to follow instructions in every detail. This may become dramatic in case of a breakdown, as
then, one cannot arduously search for the needed valves, but has to „react automatically, like a monkey“. A
too slow reaction bears risks to health and financial consequences for the firm.
TU-1 regarded the intensity of training as far below the target set in the social plan which guarantees 10
vocational training days per person. However, in practice, also the participation in conferences or in training
provided by trade unions is counted as ´vocational training´, which artificially raises the number of training
days.
The interviewees found many drawbacks with the current system of further training. The personnel manager
planned to conduct a requirements planning and to draw a map of existing and of needed qualifications in the
firms, in order to identify experts and qualification gaps. TU-1 criticised deficiencies in initial training and in
know-how transfer when compared to the situation before the economic transition.
Trade unions are not much involved in the provision of further training, but there are
some exceptions – shop stewards control the achievement of training benchmarks as
codified in the Collective Agreement and in an Agreement on Employment Guarantees, or
provide their own training to workers in trade union premises. Trade unionists also criticise
deficiencies in further training, especially with regard to blue-collar workers, temp workers
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