Legally mandated notice period increases with seniority

Quick info
Data type	Numeric
Scale	Metric
Value labels	Not applicable in the strict sense since the scale is quasi-metric, but for coding the following values were used for orientation: 1 = the law provides increasing steps for more then 10 years 0.75 = the law provides increasing steps from 5 up to 10 years 0.5 = the law provides increasing steps from 2 and up to 5 years 0.25 = the law provides increasing steps for up to 2 years 0 = the law do not provides increasing steps / notice periods New template for Version 2 adds: further gradations between 0 and 1 reflect changes in the strength of the law
Technical name	labor_notped_sen
Category	Labour and labour market
Label	Legally mandated notice period increases with seniority
Related indicators	Legally mandated severance compensation increases with seniority Seniority is a decisive redundancy selection criterion

This WoL indicator measures if notice periods for employees increases with seniority by law.

Labour law not only protects workers, but also creates segmentation by privileging the standard employment relationship through higher standards of protection. The standard employment relationship is the classic model of the permanent, full-time employee who is permanently employed by one employer. Other forms of work – part-time, temporary agency work, work under a fixed-term contract, frequent changes of employee – receive less protection, even though the employment relationships in which they are engaged already inherently entail greater social risks. This leads to a further disadvantage for employees who are already in a precarious position.

Length of service is a common factor for prioritisation. However, the purpose of prioritisation is not to protect older workers, who are assumed to be less able to find a new job – after all, prioritisation of length of service is often capped after about ten years. The situation of employees who frequently have to change employers is socially more precarious than that of those with many years of service. The purpose of prioritisation is thus evidently not to provide special protection, but to cement the standard employment relationship.

Employees are existentially dependent on the income from their employment relationship, so termination of this by the employer also means the termination of the employee's ability to make a living. A mandatory notice period gives the employee the opportunity to make other arrangements to make a living in good time , for example to look for another job. The longer the notice period, the greater the protection in this sense.

Coding rules

The WoL is a leximetric dataset on individual employment protection. It quantifies the strength of the standard-setting, privileging, and equalising function of individual labour law (see Dingeldey et al. 2022). The scale ranges from "0" to "1" where "0" indicates that statutory law does not prescribe notice periods for employees to increase with seniority and "1" indicates that statutory law prescribes notice periods for employees to increase with seniority in steps for more than 10 years. Coding instructions and description of indicators are laid down in a technical paper (Fechner/Carlino, forthcoming). For country-specific information see WoL documentation (forthcoming).

Bibliographic info

Citation: Irene Dingeldey, Heiner Fechner, Jean-Yves Gerlitz, Jenny Hahs, Ulrich Mückenberger, Worlds of Labour: Introducing the Standard-Setting, Privileging and Equalising Typology as a Measure of Legal Segmentation in Labour Law, Industrial Law Journal, Volume 51, Issue 3, September 2022, Pages 560–597, https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwab016

Related publications:

• Mückenberger, Ulrich, 1985. "Die Krise des Normalarbeitsverhältnisses - Hat das Arbeitsrecht noch Zukunft?" Zeitschrift für Sozialreform 31: 415-434; 457-475.
• Mückenberger, Ulrich, and Simon Deakin. 1989. "From Deregulation to a European Floor of Rights: Labour Law, Flexibilisation and the European Single Market." Zeitschrift Für Ausländisches Und Internationales Arbeits- Und Sozialrecht 3: 153–207.
• Carlino, M., Fechner, H., & Schäfer, A. (2024). Using leximetrics for coding legal segmentation in employment law: The development and potential of the Worlds of Labour database. In I. Dingeldey, H. Fechner, & U. Mückenberger (Eds.), Constructing Worlds of Labour. Coverage and Generosity of Labour Law as Outcomes of Regulatory Social Policy. Palgrave Macmillan.

Misc

Project manager(s):
Responsible for data coding: Heiner Fechner (2018-2025).
Responsible for data editing and entry: Heiner Fechner (2024-2025), Andrea Schäfer (2021-2025), Jean-Yves Gerlitz (2018-2020).
Principal Investigators: Irene Dingeldey, Ulrich Mückenberger.
Student assistants (2018-2025): Julia Bode, Jessica Bonn, Daniel Euler, Maxime Fischer, Jan-Christopher Floren, Jennifer Götte, Désirée Hoppe, Irina Kyburz, Alexandra Kojnow, Tarek Mahmalat, Karolin Meyer, Johanna Nold, Tanusha Pali, Johannes Ramsauer, Max Sudhoff, Kristina Walter, Caroline Zambiasi.

Data release:

• Version 0.001: Initial release

Revisions: The template has been revised in 2024, but coding for the completion of the revised dataset is still ongoing; values in WeSIS Version 0.001 correspond to the original template.

Sources

Own coding.