Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

Kohli (1988: 46) refers to the antidiscrimination legislation in the USA, which has not
managed to give a halt to early retirement, and concludes that “the pressure of the labour
market has apparently vastly limited the effect of constitutional and political interventions
which were diametrically opposed”. He states furthermore: “The institutional differences
between the countries might have developed the trend towards early retirement to varying
degrees but have not managed to give a halt to it” (ibid: 47). The fact that early retirement
was frequently used in concordance with mass layoffs to ease the strain on the labour
market, and was even supported in this function by governments is a further case in point.
Mares (2001: 209) claims that “[f]irms in industries with unfavourable demographic
structure used early retirement more extensively, as compared to firms with a younger age
structure”. The firm-structural approach further states that firms strive to gain autonomy
from the external labour market, therefore they tend not to recruit older applicants and to
externalise older workers so as to preserve an even age structure. Moreover, workers above
the age of 55 have already fulfilled their function of socialising younger employees and
passing on their knowledge, therefore their period of usefulness has come to an end (Kohli
et al. 1983: 33).
Operationalisation: I will compare how firms which fare well and less well on the
labour market (based on firm data or on economic indicators for the respective branches)
deal with their older workers. I will furthermore analyse whether age management in
companies follows a pattern related to the average age of their workforce and the relative
proportion of employees at the age of 50 and older.
Naschold et al. (1990) defined the position of older workers in the firm in relation to
production regimes (taylorism, diversified quality production and innovation-orientated
market expansion strategy) which breed certain labour market risks. They were interested in
the interplay between state-induced and firm-induced early retirement strategies. They
anticipated three possible reactions of firms to state action in the field of early exit:
- “direct exclusion [of older workers] and externalisation of costs”;
- “strategies of utilising the human capital [of older workers]”;
- “far-reaching adjustment of the structure of workplace to the age structure of the
workforce” (ibid: 192; own translation).
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