And most of the jobs that refugees could be doing will be performed by robots in less than 20 years.
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Findings show challenge of integrating migrants into labour force
yesterdayby: Guy Chazan in Berlin and Patrick McGee in Frankfurt
ft.com |
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Germany’s deputy chancellor has written to bosses of the country’s leading companies demanding they hire more refugees, after a survey found they had taken on a grand total of just 54.
About 1m migrants arrived in Germany last year, about a third of them refugees from Syria. Angela Merkel’s government has made it a priority to integrate them into the German labour market as quickly as possible.
But despite the large number of vacancies in the German jobs market — 665,000 in June — it has proven harder than expected to recruit the refugees into the workforce.
A survey by the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper of the top 30 German companies found that they had together employed just 54 refugees. Fifty of them were hired by one company, Deutsche Post.
In his letter, Sigmar Gabriel, economics minister and leader of the centre-left Social Democrats, said the smaller enterprises that make up Germany’s Mittelstand had been building bridges to enable refugees to enter the labour market.
“But without the flagships of the German economy, without you, the bridge is not yet complete,” he wrote. “Show that the biggest companies in this country are not only the best at revenues and profits … but also when it comes to integrating [refugees].”
A spokesman for Bayer, the German pharmaceuticals group, said that while refugees were motivated and willing to learn, “they come from countries with educational systems where science is barely taught, and that’s what you need for a job at Bayer.” He said the company had so far not employed a single refugee.
When the migrant crisis reached its height last year, Germany’s bosses were initially optimistic about the newcomers’ chances. Dieter Zetsche, chief executive of Daimler, the carmaker, said at the time that they could lay the foundation for the “next German economic miracle”.
They [refugees] come from countries with educational systems where science is barely taught, and that’s what you need for a job at BayerBayer spokesperson
But since then, expectations that they could fill Germany’s skills gap have been radically scaled back. Authorities say the main problem is a lack of professional qualifications and German language skills.
According to official statistics, of the nearly 300,000 refugees currently registered as looking for work, 74 per cent have had no vocational training and a quarter do not even have a school-leaving certificate. Nine per cent have a degree.
There is also evidence that thousands are slipping through the cracks of a system that is supposed to ensure nearly everyone is either in work or education. Figures from the Federal Employment Agency, released late last month, showed that 131,000 refugees are neither employed nor enrolled on any courses or training programmes.
Other German companies contacted by the FT rejected Mr Gabriel’s criticism. A spokesman for SAP, the German software group, said: “For many companies it all comes down to cost.
“They have to weigh up if they can afford to employ a person who perhaps doesn’t have the appropriate qualifications and whose language skills are lacking.”
A Daimler spokesman suggested Mr Gabriel was being unrealistic. “Everybody expects an instant solution, but there’s no such thing,” he said.
Several of the companies contacted said they had created special internships and apprenticeships for refugees. Daimler has one of the largest programmes, with 300 asylum-seekers passing through its 14-week “bridge internship” in the first half of the year.
Of the forty interns who had worked at the Mercedes-Benz factory near Stuttgart, most had received offers of employment in the industry, or been offered an apprenticeship at Daimler, the company said.
Steelmaker ThyssenKrupp has also created 230 additional internships specially for refugees and 150 more apprenticeships.
But at most other companies, the schemes are much smaller in scale. For example, the nine-month vocational course for refugees run by Eon, the German utility, has space for just 15 people, while four migrants are doing an introductory training placement at the company.
Often they simply aren’t able to take up a job that’s offered to them because the company is too far from where they liveSAP spokesman
It said one problem was the lack of interest in long apprenticeships. “Many refugees want to, and have to, start working fast, but training takes a long time,” an Eon spokesman said.
Rocket Internet, the Berlin-based technology group, said it had created two internships for refugees, but had been unable to fill them. Bayer’s advanced training course has 20 places, but 10 remain unfilled.
Others blamed German bureaucracy, particularly the tough restrictions on where refugees can live. “Often they simply aren’t able to take up a job that’s offered to them because the company is too far from where they live,” said the SAP spokesman. “For us it would be a big help if the refugees could determine their place of residence themselves.”
Assembly line at Daimler's Mercedes-Benz factory in Sindelfingen, Germany © Bloomberg
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