Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

Perceived drawbacks of older workers which were named most often were bad habits
from old system, low mobility, low flexibility, inability to learn new things, unwillingness
to adapt to changes. As “bad habits from old system”, the interviewees named drunkenness,
low work ethic, too high self-assessment, rejection of changes associated with market
economy. Some interviewees criticised the missing computer skills and missing knowledge
of foreign languages.
The fact that Polish interviewees found more faults with older workers than the German
ones suggests that the older generation in Poland is factually less adapted to work under
market conditions (that opinion was voiced by employers in a representative survey; Ipsos
2007: 26) than in Germany. Thus, older workers can be regarded as a group which is most
disadvantaged by the transformation in terms of their labour market integration (Synak
1996: 57-8).
At the same time, Polish respondents found also far more virtues of older workers then
German interviewees. Polish firm representatives mentioned besides experience and knowhow
(21 persons) also company loyalty (6 votes), work discipline and reliability (6 votes),
and even temperament and orderly family life (10 persons).
This polarisation of opinions on older workers can be explained with market pressure,
as those personnel managers which were most critical of older workers were members of
private or mixed ownership firms. In fact, the same persons issued both negative and
positive opinions on older persons, but personnel managers were more critical than
employee representatives.
I did not ask Polish firm experts directly about the prospected effects of workforce
ageing. Nevertheless, some of them offered their assessment. Workforce ageing was
associated with know-how losses after experienced workers retire, with lack of successors,
with higher absenteeism rate and more frequent medical contraindications to perform
certain tasks, with lower mobility, lower innovation potential, and with a ´bad´ age structure
per se. In those accounts, it became apparent that the ageing of the workforce is perceived
as a threat, and that the interviewees were not content with the age structure of the
workforce in their firms. As the optimum average age of the workforce, they regarded the
age range 30-40.
An ´age-blind´ personnel policy was asserted by interviewees in nine firms, but in some
of those firms older workers were granted preferential treatment with regard to seniority
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