Project: Age-differentiated tariff policy

Third-party funded project

• Project leader: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schroeder

• Duration: until September 2010

• Cooperation partner: Sociological Research Institute Göttingen(SOFI)

• Funded by: "New Quality of Work Initiative"(INQA)

• Project management University of Kassel: Johannes Grabbe, Johannes Freidank

There has long been a general consensus in science and politics that it is necessary to increase the employment rate of older workers - generally meaning those over the age of 55 - in order to prevent further destabilization of social security systems and negative effects on the competitiveness and innovative capacity of local companies in the face of so-called demographic change. In addition, it is pointed out that employees are not only forced to work longer due to the expiry of the previous early retirement scheme and the increase in the retirement age, but that there is also a growing interest in a longer working phase among employees themselves as they get older.

At the same time, it is striking that the vast majority of companies are doing very little or nothing at all to create age- and age-appropriate employment conditions and that there are only a few concrete collective bargaining initiatives on the part of the parties to collective agreements. Furthermore, the legislator's decision to end the previous early retirement scheme and the increase in the retirement age ("retirement at 67") do not in themselves contribute to an effective increase in the employment rate and, in particular, to an improvement in the conditions under which older employees can actually work longer.

The aim of the project is therefore to analyze conditions, logics and strategies that promote age-appropriate and age-differentiated working and employment conditions and that are suitable for achieving an increased employment rate of older employees across the board. To this end, the existing collective agreements on inter-company regulation are analyzed with regard to age-appropriate and age-differentiated content and their conditions of origin. On the other hand, company measures in the metal, electrical and chemical industries and in the retail trade are being investigated with regard to age-appropriate working and the promotion of the employment of older workers.

These company studies are carried out with the aim of

• identify positive examples of good practice in individual companies,

• analyze the operational conditions under which they came about, and

• to determine the possibilities, prerequisites and any obstacles to their generalization within the framework of sectoral collective agreements.

In addition to the company surveys, expert interviews will be conducted with association representatives on their assessments of possible innovations with regard to age-appropriate and age-differentiated collective bargaining policies, as well as a broad-based standardized survey of HR managers and works councils in the three sectors. The results will be summarized in impulse papers, which will form the basis of transfer workshops that will focus on the practicability of the surveys and the generalizability of the results. A comparative analysis between three key sectors and their discussion in transfer workshops with strategic players from the employer and employee side has not yet been carried out.

The project is funded by the "Initiative Neue Qualität der Arbeit" (INQA). The project partner is Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schroeder / University of Kassel. The project is being carried out in cooperation with the SOFI Göttingen, under the responsibility of PD Dr. Jürgen Kädtler. Project collaborators are Johannes Grabbe and Johannes Freidank (Kassel) and Dr. Knut Tullius (Göttingen).

Dr. Knut Tullius:
knut.tullius(at)sofi.uni-goettingen.de
+49 551 5220511

• BAuA/ INQA (ed.) (2011): Maintaining and promoting employability - an opportunity for companies and collective bargaining policy, Dortmund: BAuA/ INQA.