W. German Youth: No to Manual Labor

Call it a reluctance to work on wind-swept rooftops, knead dough at four o’clock in the morning or get dirty installing furnaces.

Whatever the reasons, West Germany is facing a serious shortage of young people interested in skilled manual labor.

The situation has become so serious that the federal government in Bonn is calling on ethnic German immigrants and women to apply for the jobs. At the same time, it is urging some students to look to skilled manual labor instead of universities, which are overflowing.

Long-Range Effects

At a recent manual labor trade fair in Kassel, about 110 miles north of Frankfurt, construction worker Friedrick Baum, 64, explained what the long-range effects of the trainee shortage might be in his trade.

“Our generation was the one that rebuilt the country after the war,” he said. “Sometimes when I look back I can’t believe what we accomplished.

“Now, with many of us getting ready to retire, and not enough apprentices to train, we’re facing an experience gap that will get worse over the next 10 years.”

Education Minister Juergen Moellemann has proposed that the government increase its annual spending on the training of specialists in labor and technical fields by the equivalent of $216 million to $1.3 billion.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl recently told the Rhineland Palatinate state Labor Chamber that it should fill the trainee gap with women or young ethnic German immigrants from countries in Eastern Europe.

“This would not only signal solidarity with our own people and help them,” he said. “It can be an enrichment to take on these people, who often show an especially high motivation for work.”

Some old-timers in the country’s 126 trades classified as manual labor say West German young people today want only white-collar jobs.

Few Trainees

Federal Labor Office figures for January indicated that 2.3 million West Germans were unemployed but that only 92,402 of the jobless were youths or new trainee prospects.

With so few prospects, employers say that finding manual labor trainees is difficult.

Helmut Gress, who runs a plumbing and heating company in Koenigstein, about 20 miles north of Frankfurt, says he has been trying for two years to find an apprentice.

“There just doesn’t seem to be anyone interested,” he said. “I think they see the work as too hard and sometimes dirty.”

Hannelore Eckes, 50, who with her husband Horst operates a bakery in the same town, said their search for a trainee has been fruitless.

“We’ve tried to find either a young woman or man since the end of the last school year. But no one wants to do manual work anymore. Part of it is because our day starts at 4 a.m., and we work half-days on Saturday.”

At the Kassel trade fair, Guenter Griehs, a 65-year-old retired welder, manned a booth advertising for young people to get into the welding business.

“It’s not like it was when I became an apprentice,” he said. “In those days we were encouraged and proud to become master tradesmen.

‘Parents, Schools at Fault’

“Parents and schools are partly at fault because they push children to keep studying for office work and computers rather than work with their hands.”

He said industries, such as auto makers, hire away many young people with starting salaries as high as $550 a month, while most apprentices in manual trades average $190 to $375 a month.

Karl Weinhold, 57, a senior construction worker at another booth at the fair, said the building industry has its own special problems that discourage youth.

“When you move heavy stones around to build houses from age 16 on, by the time you’re 45 your spine is so worn out you can’t walk straight anymore. The young know this.”