Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

firms have an even longer protection period for older workers ranging from five till 15
years. The motive behind those collective regulations is to shield older workers from the
adverse situation on the labour market.
Several patterns of personnel reductions existed in the analysed firms. The one most
frequent took the form of „natural” and „harmless” downsizing of workers entitled to preretirement
benefits, disability pensions and (early) old-age pensions in the first place, and to
dismissals/mass lay-offs of other workers in the second place. Several firms used „natural
turnover” for downsizing and encouraged workers to leave on early retirement pensions and
pre-retirement benefits. The next measure in terms of frequency was mass lay-off and
individual dismissals for operational reasons directed at workers of all ages. Two privatised
firms with strong employment guarantees took resort to voluntary early exit programmes
due to employment guarantees directed at workers of all ages, but with stronger focusing of
singular early exit programmes on workers with entitlements to social security benefits.
Last, a few firms made seasonal adjustments in slack periods during which workers were
selected based on criteria other than age (temporary employment, qualification level).
Severance payments in Polish firms are much lower than in Germany and therefore do
not constitute a separate early exit pathway. The largest severance payment amounted to 15
monthly wages plus jubilee awards, up to ca. 100,000 zł. German firms can to a larger
degree afford “instrument substitution” (Casey 1989).
As can be seen, adaptation strategies dominate in which older workers are used as a
flexibility resource. That supports hypothesis 2A (see section 2.2.).
I will describe a typical example of early exit employed in order to facilitate personnel
reductions.
In a chemicals company, mass lay-offs were conducted at the end of the 1990s. The
year 1997 witnessed an exit of 120-170 older workers (as to the exact number, the accounts
of the various interviewees differed) besides of other workers dismissed in a regular way.
The same situation occurred at the end of the year 2003. The exit of older workers was
labelled by HRM-2 and by TU “the lesser evil”. Workers with entitlement to the early
retirement pension for economic reasons (in 1997/1998), respectively for pre-retirement
benefits (in 2003/2004) were dismissed, as those benefits require a cancellation of the
employment contract. The workers made their living from severance payments amounting
to up to 12 monthly wages until they qualified for early old-age pension, sometimes bridged
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