Germany pays price of labour shortages

[pampango]

Source: UK Financial Times

German industrial companies are paying highly skilled workers large bonuses and increased wages to counter the worst labour shortage that Europe’s largest economy has seen since the country’s “economic miracle” of the 1960s.

Companies from Siemens to Porsche and Continental have announced cash bonuses and said they would use a clause in the national engineering wage agreement to bring forward by two months to February a 2.7 per cent annual salary increase for their German workforce. Labour market experts say the companies’ largesse is mostly a reflection of a drastic skill shortage that has started to impact on Germany’s booming engineer-driven economy.

The value of German exports is set to rise 16 per cent to €937bn in 2010, driven by strong demand for premium cars and machinery from China and other emerging countries, and manufacturers are starting to feel the strain. “The main reason is that companies have underestimated this year’s economic boom. Several sectors already face a substantial skill shortage,” says Joachim Möller, director of IAB, a German labour market research institute.

Today’s industrial companies are looking for higher-skilled staff. They are retraining workers to learn new skills and trying to attract foreign professionals, but with limited success.

Read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f8a5005c-f7ea-11df-8d91-00144feab49a.html#axzz16F84RKYc

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[gratuitous]

2. I thought Germany was all socialist

Paying workers more money? Actually, I guess that clinches it. Why aren't they joining the race to the bottom? Don't they know that every dollar that makes it into a worker's pocket is one less dollar the overrich can hoard? Maybe it's time to declare war on them again and teach them a lesson about freedom and stuff.

[tabasco]

7. Germany is getting more like the US every day.

Their verison of the pukes are constantly cutting social programs.

[pampango]

10. "Germans, with their powerful unions ... have a real voice in their employment."

http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/100807-kinchen-columnsbookreview.html

In Germany, Geoghegan finds the true "other"—an economic model with more bottom-up worker control than that of any other country in the world — and argues that, while we have to take Germany’s problems seriously, we also have to look seriously at how much it has achieved. Social democracy may let us live nicer lives; it also may be the only way to be globally competitive. His anecdotal book helps us understand why the European model, contrary to popular neoliberal wisdom, may thrive well into the twenty-first century without compromising its citizens' ease of living — and be the best example for the United States to follow.

OK, some facts about Germany, the largest economy by far in the European Union and the fourth largest in the world, measured by gross domestic product per person (GDP), with a thriving export-oriented manufacturing sector -- like the kind we used to have when we manufactured goods that were desired around the world.

Germany, with 83 million people and few natural resources, is the world's second largest exporter, with $1.170 trillion exported in 2009. You know who is the largest exporter and it ain't us. Hint: It begins with C and ends in A. and has more than 1.3 billion residents. Germany's service sector contributes about 70 percent of the total GDP of Germany, with industry another 29.1 percent and agriculture less than 1 percent. Most of the country's exports are in engineering, automobiles, machinery, metals and chemicals. Germany is the world's leading producer of wind turbines and solar power technology.

Geoghegan tells us that the average number of paid vacation days in the U.S. is 13, compared with Germany’s 35. New mothers in the U.S. get three months of unpaid job-protected leave and only if they work for a company of 50 or more employees, while Germany mandates four months’ paid leave and will pay parents 67% of their salary to stay home for up to 14 months to care for a newborn. U.S. life expectancy is 50th in the world, compared to Germany’s 32nd.

[Crazy Dave]

3. Maybe the 99'ers here in the US could get employment asylum there

They'll be shit out of luck next month so like the US with Mexico, maybe you'll start seeing Americans fleeing and escaping our failing country for a better life overseas.

[eleny]

4. Oil patch workers have found work abroad

If Germany was willing to accept skilled foreign workers in the auto industry surely there would be highly skilled Americans who would qualify.

[NorthCarolina]

5. Labor shortages?? Is the US the only non-industrial, industrialized nation in the world? nt

[applegrove]

6. And this in a country the freepers and neocons held up as an example of a

'librul' economy that was failing. failing MY ASS!

[Imajika]

9. Germany has a rightwing government...

...led by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).

The left is not represented at all.

Before applauding everything the German government is doing, it would be wise for folks to realize the current German government in power is not in any way progressive.

[lunasun]

11. and much of the population /business community not so immigrant friendly there........

that and the politics; 'word' does get around globally

[bemildred]

8. So in Germany workers get treated like CEOs do here. This is good. We should copy. nt