Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

criteria of what jobs are they are supposed to accept. Job placement in the regular and not in
the subsidised labour market has acquired a higher priority.
An expression of the activation trend is the programme „Initiative 50 plus“ launched in
2002 with the Job-AQTIV Act and subsequent acts and revived in 2006. It introduced
´integration grants´ (wage costs subsidies for employers when hiring unemployed
´50pluses´), qualification vouchers for persons in SME, facilitated opportunity to conclude
temporary contracts with persons aged 52 and over 21 , and earnings subsidies granted to
´50pluses´ who take up a lower-paid job (BmAS 2006c). Factually, only the integration
grants generated positive effects on the recruitment chances of older unemployed,
predominantly in Eastern Germany (Zwick 2006: 161-2). Other measures were largely
unknown by the firms, and even by job placement officers (BmAS 2006b: xviii-xix;
Eichhorst 2006a: 108).
Another form of intervention of the German state in the regulation of the work contract
is its legislation on Flexible Working Time Regulations from 1998. With this law, the
legislator created incentives to install life-time work accounts. They may be inter al. used
for training purposes, for gradual or early exit. In contrast to long-time work accounts, lifetime
work accounts are protected against insolvency.
Compared to other OECD countries, Germany has a strong legal and collectively agreed
protection against dismissals (OECD 2005a: 116-8). Since 1969, it covers workers with an
unlimited work contract and with a work history of at least six months in firms with more
than ten (till 2004, more than five) employees; the period of notice rises with tenure. Those
workers can only be dismissed for indiscipline or due to operational reasons in connection
with a looming insolvency or mass redundancies. In a redundancy payments scheme drawn
for this reason, the employer has to consider the criteria of age, seniority, dependants, severe
disability and efficiency. The last criterion, introduced in 2004, has opened the way to shield
younger workers from dismissals and exposed older workers to that risk, as the criterion of
´job prospects´ closely connected to age was simultaneously dismantled (Thora 2004: 11).
21 After an appeal by the European Court of Justice on grounds of ageism, the legislator included the rule that
the worker had had to be unemployed for at least four months and the temporary contract may not be extended
beyond five years.
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