Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

Figure 13: Procedure of translating legislative changes into personnel policy in Polish
firms
Firms take into account workers´ choices when designing early exit programmes.
Legislative changes are filtered by the wishes of workers to stay or to leave the firm. The
consent of workers (and of trade unions) to early exit facilitates the process of downsizing. I
have shown firm cases where the employer responded to the wishes of workers to exit
before an unfavourable change of law. Moreover, some firms where personnel reductions
were underway responded in singular cases to the wishes of workers to continue work until
standard retirement age. Also, if the legislative change induced a prolongation of working
life (e.g. the lowering of pre-retirement benefits) but the workers still wished to exit early,
the firms responded to those wishes. I did not perceive those interrelations as strongly in the
German case – there, if legislative regulations (e.g. the early retirement scheme) were to
expire, older workers would nevertheless not have to fear unemployment (possibly resulting
in poverty) due to better statutory and collective dismissal protection. Therefore, if older
workers insisted in Germany on participation in the ATZ programme, it was not a matter of
such vital significance (´to be or not to be´) as in the Polish case.
The arrow between the second and the third box points in two directions, as the
workers´ preferences and decisions are likewise influenced by firms´ decisions (e.g. the
decision to downsize personnel), as was demonstrated on cases in section 4.3.7.
4.3.9. Cooperation between the Management and Trade Unions at plant
level
In this chapter, I will describe the mode of cooperation between the management and
employee representatives on issues pertaining to older workers in Polish companies. I will
concentrate on issues of recruitment, further training, health management and exit policies,
early retirement ´due to operational reasons´. That two-directional process is reflected in the dashed arrows in
Fig. 3 (section 3.1.).
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