Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

environment, prevention of health injuries, personnel planning, work organisation, new
technology, job content, financial and economic matters (Visser/Van Ruyssefeldt 1996: 151-
2).
56 per cent of workers in Western Germany, and 41 per cent in Eastern Germany work
in firms covered with a collective agreement, and 46 per cent, respectively 39 per cent are
represented by a works council (Ellguth/Kohaut 2007: 516; IAB Establishment panel data).
The larger the firm, the higher the coverage by a works council. In companies with over 200
workers, 71 per cent had an elected works council in 2007 (Stettes 2007; IW Zukunftspanel
data). That entails that the personnel policy of German firms in my sample will be the result
of co-determination by the management and the works councils, and, especially in the field
of early retirement and employee exit, it will be not possible for the management to make
decisions on its own (see section 4.2.9. and hypothesis 7 in section 2.4.).
I will now turn to singular aspects of personnel policy and portray some collective
agreements valid in that realm (based on Bispinck 2002, 2005, if not indicated otherwise).
With regard to the protection against dismissals, collective bargaining partners are free
to define more generous or stricter rules than the legally stipulated increase of the period of
notification from one month after a two-year employment period, to seven months after 20
years in the company. Usually, social partners define more levels of notification periods,
sometimes based on a combination of tenure and age. Many agreements define an age at
which a regular dismissal is not possible, e.g. at the age of 50 and with a job tenure of 15
years in the iron and steel industry and at the age of 40 and after 15 years in the public
sector in Western Germany.
Contrary to arguments that seniority wages are detrimental to recruitment chances of
older workers (BDA 2003a: 28), a direct coupling of wage formation to age is rare and
existing regulations in the metal-working industry and in the public sector have phased out.
The Collective Agreement for the Public Sector (TvÖD) from September 2005 has replaced
the raising of wages every two years till completion of the 49 th year with higher initial
wages and raises according to tenure. If wage formation in other sectors is directly linked to
age, then at maximum till the age of 28. Tenure constitutes a more frequent base of wage
formation resulting in two till 16 wage gradations. Remuneration may be also bound to
work experience (e.g. in banking, chemical industry) or to the actual tasks (e.g. in metalworking
industry, in the food industry; information from expert interviews from Oct.-Dec.
2003). The OECD found out that age-earnings profiles in Germany, when the educational
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