Ending a Career in the Auto Industry

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

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2. Internal Labor Markets, Plant Closings, and Retirement

   Pages 1-20

3. Some Matters of Context

   Pages 21-47

4. The Financial Structure of Early-Retirement Pensions

   Pages 49-86

5. Predicting Early Retirement

   Pages 87-133

6. Discussing Options in an End-Game

   Pages 135-162

7. Solidarity and “Generational Equity”

   Pages 163-190

8. Aspects of Postretirement Satisfaction

   Pages 191-219

9. Inducing Early Retirement: Some Conclusions in Perspective

   Pages 221-237

10. Back Matter

    Pages 239-272

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During the 1980s the news media were filled with reports of soaring unemployment as 'downsizing' and `restructuring' became the new buzzwords. Firms managed their workforce reduction by increasing the attractiveness of their pension plans-especially their early-retirement plans. In this volume, the authors examine the U.S. auto industry and present a full-scale analysis of the work and retirement decisions of its workers. They address organizational context and the logic of financial incentives in employer-provided early retirement plans. The impact of pension provisions, layoffs, plant closures, attitudes about `generational equity', and other factors influencing the workers' evaluation of the optimum time to end their careers in the auto industry are explored.

• Evaluation
• Generation
• Unemployment
• labor market
• labor markets
• organization
• restructuring

`This book breaks important new ground... This study is unusual in that the authors had access to the characteristics of the workers as well as survey data on worker attitudes.'
Contemporary Sociology (July 1998)

• Florida State University, Tallahassee

  Melissa A. Hardy, Lawrence Hazelrigg, Jill Quadagno

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