PREDICTED IMPACTS OF PENSION REFORM ON THE LABOUR MARKET IN POLAND

Pension system reforms increasing retirement age and accentuating citizens’ individual responsibility for the amounts of their future pensions have effects on labour markets. This article provides an analysis of factors determining the interest of employees over 50, and even those over 45, in continued employment, as well as of relevant compulsion and risk factors. Some of the discussion deals with the assumptions underlying the Polish pension system reform and its likely effect on longer working lives. A hypothesis is formulated that for older employees to continue employment, working conditions must improve, as the responses of both older employees and their employers reveal insufficient sensitivity to the need to adapt the conditions to the capabilities of an ageing workforce. Yet, even if the necessary measures are taken, occupational stratification leading to the emergence of age-segmented labour market with low-skilled, precarious, and part-time jobs is unavoidable. The article is partly based on the results of a survey that a University of Łódź team conducted for the project Diagnosis of the current situation of women and men aged 50+ on the labour market in Poland, funded by the European Social Fund.