Merkel wants Germany to
get refugees into workforce faster
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[September 15, 2016]
By Georgina Prodhan and Andreas Rinke
FRANKFURT/BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor
Angela Merkel said on Thursday that Germany needed "viable solutions" to
integrate refugees into the workforce faster after she met blue-chip
companies that have hired just over 100 refugees since around a million
arrived last year.
Merkel, her popularity undermined by her open-door policy, summoned the
bosses of some of Germany's biggest companies to Berlin on Wednesday to
account for their lack of action and exchange ideas about how they can
do better.
Many of the companies contend that a lack of German-language skills, the
inability of most refugees to prove any qualifications and uncertainty
about their permission to stay in the country mean there is little they
can do in the short term.
Merkel told rbb-inforadio that if needed, special provisions could be
developed to speed up the integration of refugees into the workforce,
but she acknowledged this would still take time.
"Many are in integration courses or waiting to get on them. So I think
we will need to show some patience, but must be ready at any time to
develop viable solutions," she said.
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A participant at the meeting with Merkel said company executives from
DAX firms and small businesses discussed their opinions for 2-1/2 hours
and came to the conclusion: "We want to do this". When talking about the
refugee influx, Merkel frequently says: "Wir schaffen das" or "we can do
this".
The meeting spurred some firms to announce more action to help get
refugees into the workforce.
Deutsche Bahn boss Ruediger Grube said IT would offer 150 extra
places in qualification programs for refugees, Volkswagen said it was
working with Kiron, a non-profit start-up, to help refugees start a
university degree, Thyssenkrupp announced around 150 extra training
positions and Daimler announced 50, the source said.
"Wir Zusammen" or "We Together", an integration initiative of German
companies, said much had been achieved to support the arrival of the
newcomers but now they had to turn their attention to integrating them
into the workforce.
"Now it's about motivating those companies that are not yet active," it
said in a statement after the summit.
A survey by Reuters of the 30 companies in Germany's DAX stock index
last week found they could point to just 63 refugee hires in total.
Of those, 50 were employed by Deutsche Post DHL, which said it applied a
"pragmatic approach" and deployed the refugees to sort and deliver
letters and parcels.
"Given that around 80 percent of asylum seekers are not highly qualified
and may not yet have a high level of German proficiency, we have
primarily offered jobs that do not require technical skills or a
considerable amount of interaction in German," a company spokesman said
by email.
Deutsche Post's Chief Executive Frank Appel said on Wednesday the
company had now hired more refugees, taking its total to 102.
Several of the 27 firms who responded said they considered it
discriminatory to ask about applicants' migration history, so they did
not know whether they employed refugees or how many.
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![](../images/091516pics/busine17.jpg)
Refugees show their skills in metal processing works during a media
tour at a workshop for refugees organized by German industrial group
Siemens in Berlin, Germany, April 21, 2016. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch/Files
![](../images/ads/current/demay_inv-lda081412.png)
What is clear is that early optimism that the wave of migrants might boost
economic growth and help ease a skills shortage in Germany - where the
working-age population is projected to shrink by 6 million people by 2030 - is
evaporating.
"The employment of refugees is no solution for the skills shortage," industrial
group Thyssenkrupp's Chief Executive Heinrich Hiesinger said earlier this
month.
APPRENTICESHIP BARRIERS
Most large German companies, especially those in manufacturing, prefer to hire
through structured apprenticeship programs, in which they train young people for
up to four years for highly skilled and sometimes company-specific jobs.
But the recent arrivals from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are mainly
ill-prepared for such training, they say.
The DAX-listed companies surveyed by Reuters were able to identify about 200
apprentices in this or last year's intake. Many will have been through months of
pre-training especially designed for migrants by large companies, such as
engineering group Siemens, Mercedes maker Daimler or automotive technology firm
Continental.
Two Syrian interns visited by Reuters at a Siemens power-plant construction site
in April applied for apprenticeships, but could not immediately be accepted
because they are still in the process of proving their school-leaving
qualifications. One is meantime doing temporary work in IT and the other taking
German classes.
It is simply too soon to expect large numbers of refugees to have been hired
yet, most German companies say.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Sep/15/images/ads/current/brickey_lda_061314.png)
"Our experience is that it takes a minimum of 18 months for a well-trained
refugee to go through the asylum procedure and learn German at an adequate level
in order to apply for a job," said a spokeswoman for Deutsche Telekom.
(Additional reporting by Caroline Copley, Michelle Martin, Paul Carrel, Andreas
Rinke and Markus Wacket in Berlin, Jan Schwartz in Hamburg, Matthias Inverardi
in Duesseldorf and Harro ten Wolde, Ludwig Burger, Edward Taylor and Tina Bellon
in Frankfurt; editing by Ralph Boulton)
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