Older Workers in Restructuring

Against the background of globalisation, the financial crisis, and rapid progress in IT, organisational restructuring has become a widespread phenomenon. Restructuring measures can have severe health effects and impact motivation not only of redundant workers but also of those who are not directly involved in restructuring. This aspect is often neglected, though it might contribute to the failure of the whole process. It is assumed that particularly “vulnerable” groups of workers – such as older workers, those in precarious working arrangements and so forth – might be affected by restructuring measures in terms of insecurity, perceived workload, time pressure, stress and ill-health. In order to support this argument, this paper investigates the data from a German representative survey on working conditions and a case study of a German savings bank.