Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

conclusion that “no one will save the firm, if not them” (ibid). That resembles the situation
in Germany (Schmidt/Trinczek 1999: 117-8) and in my German case studies (section 4.2.9.)
There were also trade unions which supported the interest of older workers. That
happened by rejecting their selection for individual dismissals, by convincing them not to
exit early, or openly criticising the externalisation strategy towards older workers..
An interesting mechanism of collusion of interests of trade unions and workers occurred
in three firms, where trade unions enforced dismissals for operational reasons or mass layoffs
in order to let workers exit via pre-retirement benefits before the change of law.
Other issues pertaining to early exit are dealt with by nation-wide trade unions. The
head offices of the post-communist OPZZ trade unions and of the Solidarity trade union are
constantly lobbying for the prolongation of early old-age pensions.
However, age management, especially the creation of opportunities for the prolongation
of working life, is neither on the agenda of firm-level nor nation-wide trade unions.
Hypothesis 7 (see section 2.4.) can be answered in a founded way only at the example
of Firm PL-9. There, the employer signed voluntary exits programmes with several trade
unions (inter al. the largest one), while the Solidarity trade union chose not to participate.
However, my impression is that it was the power of the employer alone, and not the
situation of rivalling trade unions, which brought about such a result.
That (largest) trade union decided to cooperate only after the first wave of reductions
had taken place, in order to improve the conditions of exit for affected (older and younger)
workers. Also in talks with trade unionists in other firms, I learnt that the decision to cooperate
with the management on issues of personnel reductions had not been sparked by the
wish to distinguish themselves from rival trade unions and to attract more members, but to
limit the power of the employer and to improve the position of workers: “[I]f there was not
this puffer in the form of trade unions, then the lot of workers would be much worse” (Firm
PL-6_TU).
That knowledge speaks against hypothesis 7. I regard the contrary position of the two
studied trade unions as sparked by their institutional legacy (Solidarity trade unions were
always antagonistic towards employers as representatives of the ruling party; Tuszyńska
2003: 146) and by the past developments at organisational level (in the course of past
reductions, the Solidarity trade union has lost most of its members).
However, in order to test the hypothesis in a comprehensive way, and not solely
restricted to Firm PL-9, interviews with representatives of at least one other trade union in
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