Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

(Schmidt/Gatter 1997: 168), in Poland early retirement is motivated by large-scale economic
restructuring, the need to dispose of excess employment and to replace workers with
inadequate qualifications, and by the collapse of many state-owned companies (Danecka
2005: 33; Mroczkowski et al. 2005: 37, 44; Jarosz 1997: 48). In the course of privatisation,
workers in state-owned companies with strong works councils and trade unions (e.g. in the
energy sector) often managed to negotiate 4-10 years of employment guarantees in
exchange for their consent to the privatisation (Bednarski 2003: 146-7). In such cases,
personnel reductions often take the form of voluntary departures. Large-scale personnel
reductions in Poland at the end of the 1990s can be therefore explained with the termination
of employment guarantees (Borkowska et al. 2003: 73). Large firms most often resort to
early retirement in order to avoid dismissals (Mroczkowski et al. 2005: 48; Siewierski 1993:
144; Jarosz 1997: 49). Those findings suggest the interpretation that personnel reductions
affect Polish workers more frequently than German workers. In both countries, personnel
reductions pose a risk for prolonged employment due to the utilisation of early retirement.
4.1.6. Conclusions
The previous chapters showed that age management measures are not widely practised
yet, neither in Germany nor in Poland. Externalisation strategies prevail, while internalising
measures are underdeveloped. Firms exhibit a rather short planning horizon (1-5 years
ahead) and do not yet take into account the challenges of demographic and workforce
ageing. A corresponding opinion was voiced by the representatives of the German
Employers´ Association whom I interviewed in autumn 2003.
Polish firms have less developed human resource management in the meaning of an
innovative and strategic way of dealing with the workforce (Weitbrecht/Braun 1999: 92ff)
than in Germany. This shows in the way personnel is recruited, deployed, trained and
protected against safety hazards and health risks. However, that backward position of Polish
firms might change in the medium run as management techniques of new foreign owners are
adopted, and as EU regulations (e.g. in the field of occupational safety and health and equal
opportunity) will be implemented and enforced.
Structural conditions, above all the situation on the labour market, determine the way the
work contract is terminated. Early retirement is used by both Polish and German firms as a
´socially acceptable´ way of downsizing.
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