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Trade union responses to ageing workforces in the UK and Germany

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Matt Flynn

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Abstract

Ageing workforces are placing conflicting pressures on European trade unions in order to, on the one hand, protect pensions and early retirement routes, and, on the other, promote human resource management (HRM) policies geared towards enabling their older members to extend working life. Using interviews from German and United Kingdom (UK) trade unions, we discuss how unions are both constrained and enabled by pre-existing institutional structures in advocating approaches to age management. In Germany, some unions use their strong institutional role to affect public policy and industrial change at national and sectoral levels. UK unions have taken a more defensive approach, focused on protecting pension rights. The contrasting varieties of capitalism, welfare systems and trade unions' own orientations are creating different pressures and mechanisms to which unions need to respond. While the German inclusive system is providing unions with mechanisms for negotiating collectively at the national level, UK unions' activism remains localized.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Flynn M, Upchurch M, Muller-Camen M, Schroder H

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Human Relations

Year: 2013

Volume: 66

Issue: 1

Pages: 45-64

Print publication date: 01/01/2013

ISSN (print): 0018-7267

ISSN (electronic): 1741-282X

Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0018726712464801

DOI: 10.1177/0018726712464801

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