Post by Bozur on Apr 15, 2005 13:18:51 GMT -5
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ISCHGL JOURNAL
Nation That Once Drew Guest Workers Now Sends Them
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
Published: April 14, 2005
Rolond Schlager for The New York Times
Adina Lenz, 22, a waitress in Austria from eastern Germany, also worked on a farm in Iceland.
The New York Times
Ski resorts at Ischgl attract many young German seasonal workers.
ISCHGL, Austria, April 11 - You would not tend to apply the term "guest worker" to Anna Hass, who is a 23-year-old waitress at the large mountaintop Panorama Restaurant in this Austrian ski resort, because for four decades, a guest worker - Gastarbeiter in German - meant a Turk or a Yugoslav who came to labor-short Germany in search of the sort of job Germans did not usually want to do.
But now, in a somewhat painful twist of fate, Germans, especially young people from the former East Germany like Ms. Hass, are traveling abroad in search of work. They become ethnic German Gastarbeiter in Austria or Switzerland or Iceland, embodying the lengthy economic stagnation in the country where Gastarbeiter always meant somebody else.
"It's very bad," Ms. Hass, who is trained to be a veterinarian's assistant, said of her home, a village in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in northeast Germany. "There's no chance to find a job, except maybe one that's totally underpaid, like 600 euros a month," about $775.
The result, as an Austrian tabloid had it in big headlines last month, is, "The Germans Are Coming!" According to news reports, 45,000 are working in Austria, compared with half that number five years ago, though others put the current figure at more like 25,000.
"It started about three or four years ago," said Harald Seidler, the manager of the Panorama restaurant. "It was when the European Union became more restrictive about non-E.U. workers.
"Before, they came from Turkey, Croatia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, like Slovenia, but that's all over. It's really mostly Germans now. They speak German and they have good qualifications, so there's no communications problems with our guests, who are 80 percent Germans, and there's a lot less paperwork than for somebody from the East."
It is not difficult to pinpoint the paradox in this for Germany: the home of more than two million Turkish guest workers is now exporting guest workers of its own, a reversal of fortune that illustrates the extent to which Germany is no longer the country of the economic miracle.
Just as Germany set up recruitment offices in Anatolia four decades ago to persuade Turkish workers of the benefits of taking unskilled factory jobs in Germany, now there are job placement services in places like Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania finding young Germans for positions as nurses, hospital orderlies and waiters in Austria.
Several reasons are cited, not least that neighboring countries like Austria, which once lagged well behind Germany, are doing better now. Austria's unemployment rate is about 5 percent, compared with Germany's 12.5 percent (a national figure pushed upward by the figures in the former East Germany, which reach 25 percent and more).
"The Austrian economy is doing better," Karl Aiginger, director of the Austrian Institute for Economic Research, said in a telephone interview from Vienna. Among the reasons he cites are the tremendous cost of Germany's reunification, which involved a huge transfer of money from the former West to the former East, but with disappointing economic results.
"We had the advantage that many of our eastern neighbors have a high growth rate and we were able to capitalize on that," Mr. Aiginger said, referring to Austria's ability to form strong economic ties with new European Union members like the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.
But what of Austria's elaborate and costly social welfare network, similar to the network in Germany that is often blamed for a major share of German's own stagnation? Indeed, guest workers like Ms. Hass are evidence that cutbacks in Germany, especially in unemployment compensation, are driving many young Germans to Austria for seasonal work.
This corresponds to what many people in Germany are saying about the phase of economic reform that took effect at the beginning of this year. The phase, known as Hartz IV - named after the Volkswagen executive who devised the program - is aimed at reducing unemployment insurance enough so that it would no longer make economic sense for a person to remain unemployed rather than take a low-paying job.
"Hartz IV makes it harder than before," Ms. Hass said. "They count things like if you have property, or if you live with your grandmother who has a pension." Ms. Hass herself is entitled to collect unemployment payments in Germany during the off-season in Austria, but because the amount is so low - it would now be about $390 a month, compared with about $1,050 before Hartz IV went into effect - she will look for another job abroad in the summer.
Here on this mountaintop in Austria, all the hotels were fully booked this past late-season ski weekend, and young Germans were testifying to their expertise in finding jobs abroad. They use the Internet, or they go to a labor office that lists seasonal jobs in other countries. One of Ms. Hass's friends here, Adina Lenz, 22, said that two years ago, she worked on a cow and sheep farm in Iceland. Other common job offerings are picking strawberries in Sweden in the spring, or going to Disneyland in France in the summer.
"There used to be lots of agriculture," Ms. Lenz said of Mecklenburg, where she also comes from, "but there's little tourism and little industry and the infrastructure is not so good, so no big companies go there. Lots of people leave, especially young people."
Danny Huhn, a 26-year-old waiter at the Panorama who comes from Lutherstadt, in the former East Germany, gave some statistics on these departures, saying that in his graduating high school class of 17, maybe 4 or 5 are still there.
"I'm young," he said. "I go where I can make more money. I don't need to stay in Germany and work for nothing. The whole scene in East Germany is really bad. Young people go abroad a lot, and it's not that good anymore, economically speaking, in West Germany either."
ISCHGL JOURNAL
Nation That Once Drew Guest Workers Now Sends Them
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
Published: April 14, 2005
Rolond Schlager for The New York Times
Adina Lenz, 22, a waitress in Austria from eastern Germany, also worked on a farm in Iceland.
The New York Times
Ski resorts at Ischgl attract many young German seasonal workers.
ISCHGL, Austria, April 11 - You would not tend to apply the term "guest worker" to Anna Hass, who is a 23-year-old waitress at the large mountaintop Panorama Restaurant in this Austrian ski resort, because for four decades, a guest worker - Gastarbeiter in German - meant a Turk or a Yugoslav who came to labor-short Germany in search of the sort of job Germans did not usually want to do.
But now, in a somewhat painful twist of fate, Germans, especially young people from the former East Germany like Ms. Hass, are traveling abroad in search of work. They become ethnic German Gastarbeiter in Austria or Switzerland or Iceland, embodying the lengthy economic stagnation in the country where Gastarbeiter always meant somebody else.
"It's very bad," Ms. Hass, who is trained to be a veterinarian's assistant, said of her home, a village in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in northeast Germany. "There's no chance to find a job, except maybe one that's totally underpaid, like 600 euros a month," about $775.
The result, as an Austrian tabloid had it in big headlines last month, is, "The Germans Are Coming!" According to news reports, 45,000 are working in Austria, compared with half that number five years ago, though others put the current figure at more like 25,000.
"It started about three or four years ago," said Harald Seidler, the manager of the Panorama restaurant. "It was when the European Union became more restrictive about non-E.U. workers.
"Before, they came from Turkey, Croatia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, like Slovenia, but that's all over. It's really mostly Germans now. They speak German and they have good qualifications, so there's no communications problems with our guests, who are 80 percent Germans, and there's a lot less paperwork than for somebody from the East."
It is not difficult to pinpoint the paradox in this for Germany: the home of more than two million Turkish guest workers is now exporting guest workers of its own, a reversal of fortune that illustrates the extent to which Germany is no longer the country of the economic miracle.
Just as Germany set up recruitment offices in Anatolia four decades ago to persuade Turkish workers of the benefits of taking unskilled factory jobs in Germany, now there are job placement services in places like Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania finding young Germans for positions as nurses, hospital orderlies and waiters in Austria.
Several reasons are cited, not least that neighboring countries like Austria, which once lagged well behind Germany, are doing better now. Austria's unemployment rate is about 5 percent, compared with Germany's 12.5 percent (a national figure pushed upward by the figures in the former East Germany, which reach 25 percent and more).
"The Austrian economy is doing better," Karl Aiginger, director of the Austrian Institute for Economic Research, said in a telephone interview from Vienna. Among the reasons he cites are the tremendous cost of Germany's reunification, which involved a huge transfer of money from the former West to the former East, but with disappointing economic results.
"We had the advantage that many of our eastern neighbors have a high growth rate and we were able to capitalize on that," Mr. Aiginger said, referring to Austria's ability to form strong economic ties with new European Union members like the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.
But what of Austria's elaborate and costly social welfare network, similar to the network in Germany that is often blamed for a major share of German's own stagnation? Indeed, guest workers like Ms. Hass are evidence that cutbacks in Germany, especially in unemployment compensation, are driving many young Germans to Austria for seasonal work.
This corresponds to what many people in Germany are saying about the phase of economic reform that took effect at the beginning of this year. The phase, known as Hartz IV - named after the Volkswagen executive who devised the program - is aimed at reducing unemployment insurance enough so that it would no longer make economic sense for a person to remain unemployed rather than take a low-paying job.
"Hartz IV makes it harder than before," Ms. Hass said. "They count things like if you have property, or if you live with your grandmother who has a pension." Ms. Hass herself is entitled to collect unemployment payments in Germany during the off-season in Austria, but because the amount is so low - it would now be about $390 a month, compared with about $1,050 before Hartz IV went into effect - she will look for another job abroad in the summer.
Here on this mountaintop in Austria, all the hotels were fully booked this past late-season ski weekend, and young Germans were testifying to their expertise in finding jobs abroad. They use the Internet, or they go to a labor office that lists seasonal jobs in other countries. One of Ms. Hass's friends here, Adina Lenz, 22, said that two years ago, she worked on a cow and sheep farm in Iceland. Other common job offerings are picking strawberries in Sweden in the spring, or going to Disneyland in France in the summer.
"There used to be lots of agriculture," Ms. Lenz said of Mecklenburg, where she also comes from, "but there's little tourism and little industry and the infrastructure is not so good, so no big companies go there. Lots of people leave, especially young people."
Danny Huhn, a 26-year-old waiter at the Panorama who comes from Lutherstadt, in the former East Germany, gave some statistics on these departures, saying that in his graduating high school class of 17, maybe 4 or 5 are still there.
"I'm young," he said. "I go where I can make more money. I don't need to stay in Germany and work for nothing. The whole scene in East Germany is really bad. Young people go abroad a lot, and it's not that good anymore, economically speaking, in West Germany either."