Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

CATHERINE SPIESER
Organizing exit from employment and
the labour market at once: paths to early
retirement
As in Western Europe in the past (Kohli et
al. 1991, Ebbinghaus 2006), early retirement
provided a widely-used alternative to manage
mass dismissals, reducing their visibility by
the same token. While it existed as a privilege
before 1989, its function changed as it became
a mechanism for employment adjustment.
In addition, after 1990, the pension system
continued to allow a long list of professions
to retire earlier with full pension rights
(Czepulis-Rutkowska 1999: 152). Social
plans accompanying firm restructuring made
extensive use of measures allowing to peacefully
get rid of redundant workers and put them on
the two kinds of inactivity pensions available:
old-age retirement and disability. In 1991,
a regulation targeting people who would be
unable to find new employment allowed those
who had been working for 35 (women) or 40
years (men) to retire with full rights regardless
of age if they had been made redundant (ibid.).
An additional pre-retirement benefit financed
by the labour fund, was later created to bridge
the period between becoming unemployed and
reaching the legal retirement age, targeting
especially the long-term unemployed.
Evidence of the scope of early retirement
in practice is provided by several indicators
regarding people moving from work or
unemployment to retirement before the legal
retirement age. The number of people retiring
significantly exceeded those reaching retirement
age in several given years. In 1991 and 1992,
around 40% of all pensioners had not yet
reached the legal retirement age (Golinowska
1994: 33-35; Orenstein 1995: 191). In 1996
again, 39.5% of all men and 28% of women
who retired had not yet reached retirement
age (ZUS, in Müller 1999: 101). In 1999, one
third of the male workers who retired were
below 60, declining to one fourth in 2001
(ZUS figures). In 1999, still, more than 10%
of men receiving an old-age pension were
below 60. While the number of employed
people fell by 14% between 1989 and 1996,
the number of pensioners (including those
on disability benefits) rose simultaneously by
34%. Pensions clearly played the role of an
additional unemployment benefit scheme. In
2003, according to the Ministry of Economy
and Labour, out of around one million of
unemployed who were receiving some kind
of benefit (less than 30%), slightly more
than half received a pre-retirement benefit,
while only the remaining portion received a
proper unemployment benefit. In 2003, over
half a million people were receiving a preretirement
benefit or allowance. Similarly,
the high rate of certified disability suggests
that disability benefits were in part used as
a functional equivalent of pre-retirement
despite the medical examination required
to certify unfitness to work. In 2002, they
were distributed to 13% of the working-age
population (20-64), and up to 18% of those
aged between 40-55 (Burns and Kowalski
2004: 6-7). The government attempt to reform
the scheme and strengthen controls
in 2003 met with little success.
page 135
Therefore, the standard unemployment
benefit was only one of
several policy instruments used to address
rising unemployment, and not necessarily
the prevailing one. With the heavy reliance