Employees’ Experiences of the Impact of the Economic Crisis in 2009 and 2010: A German-Dutch Comparison

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Few studies have researched the impact of the 2008-2009 economic crisis on organisations’ adjustment behaviour in Germany and the Netherlands. Using large-scale data from an employee web-survey running from 2009/08 to 2010/11, this paper investigates the likelihood that German and Dutch employees work for a crisis-hit organisation. The likelihood of labour hoarding or downward adjustments of the permanent or flexible workforce in crisis-hit organisations is studied, as is the likelihood of downward adjustments in basic wages or benefits. The results show that such effects occur in large firms and the manufacturing industry much more often, that women are more likely to be working in a crisis-hit organisation but less likely to be facing any of the adjustments, that education hardly matters and that elderly workers face many more adjustments than younger workers.