(Riens; 05-03; p.4)

The ones who play Santa Claus for nothing

The lack of experience has to be equalised by younger employees.
The German work-world is characterised by a trend from physical demanding to controlling, advising and explaining jobs - even the industrial worker does successively less work like a dog, but has to work precisely or make sure that respective robots do function.
Thus, physical toughness - luckily - becomes more and more irrelevant.

Therefore, the youngdynamics must score on other fields; e.g. by taking in unusual work times including "volunteering" for over-time work, far distances between work and living place, etc.
Such behaviour in turn raises the pressure on elder employees which are less inclined to let their family lives go to make the motivation indicator rumble. They also might be more sceptical towards some "modernisation" projects because of their experience of life than, say, participants in unpaid internships.

Les share-holders

To which extent employees will accept more stress factors within their firms, remains to be seen. Whether or not the delusion of egoistic profit maximisation will have the effect that elder employees let themselves be played off against younger ones, pensioners against employees, is not in the least a question of political culture in a country.
All the same, the unfriendly take-over of the "Germany Co." is not at the door-step - who but capital owners could do so, anyway? -; at stake however is the ability of a state to act, which finances its social insurance mainly by employees' income.

Due to technical progress, the percentage of employees in production steadily falls. The argument that the distributable cake of gross domestic product does not necessarily decrease because of that, is only relevant in case, the products and automated services are sold - and capital owners usually do not tailor their consumption strictly to the development of their incomes.

(end of article)