East German Soldiers Now Being ‘Drafted’ as Civilians

When he was drafted into the East Germany army, Sven Haselman might have half-wondered if he would spend his 18 months in the service learning how to maneuver tanks or one of the big green troop carriers that trundle down the autobahn.

Instead, the 19-year-old soldier is learning to operate a streetcar so he can ferry rush-hour commuters in the industrial city of Magdeburg, about a two-hour drive southwest of Berlin.

“People may find it weird at first,” Haselman says, “but everyone gets used to it pretty quickly.”

Likewise, fellow draftees are busy delivering milk for state dairies, kneading bread in bakeries and taking their places in factory assembly lines.

The sudden appearance of uniformed soldiers in the workplace is just one of the emergency measures that East Germany is taking to cope with the growing socio-economic crisis triggered by the exodus of nearly 300,000 citizens.

Those who flee to the West abandon jobs in a nation that not only boasts but depends on 100% employment and was suffering from a serious labor shortage even before the human stampede across newly opened Communist borders began last summer.

“We haven’t seen the worst of it yet. That I guarantee you,” warned Werner Wollschlaeger, head of the city Office for Labor and Wages in the capital, East Berlin.

“There are problems yet to come,” Wollschlaeger said in an interview Friday.

Refugees bound for West Germany, where wages are markedly higher, have left 12,300 jobs open in Berlin alone, Wollschlaeger said. Only 70 who moved West have changed their minds and reported back to work, he added.

And although the total is only a small percentage of the 730,000 jobs in the city, he said, the effects are definitely felt.

Nearly 1,000 nurses have left East Berlin, along with a large number of doctors, technicians, therapists and others in health services, which is considered the country’s hardest-hit sector.

“It’s bad enough when a factory is short 100 workers,” Wollschlaeger said, “but losing even one nurse is a bitter blow.”

Nationwide, more than one-third of the 9,100 soldiers in the Volksarmee, or People’s Army, are being used to fill civilian jobs, the Interior Ministry says, and the number is expected to grow.

Hundreds of military doctors are now working in public hospitals and clinics, and officials say soldiers have become a key component in the transportation not only of consumer goods but, as in Magdeburg, of consumers as well.

All East German men between the ages of 18 and 30 are drafted for 18 months of service in the regular army, and they may later be called upon for several months of duty as reservists.

But the work crisis already has prompted the government to order the next batch of reservists--21,000 in all-- not to report for their four-month tour of duty in January but to remain in their regular jobs.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said the unprecedented step, along with public demands for military reform, may be the first step toward establishing a genuine civil service in East Germany.

“What we’re hearing is that many young people want to still fulfill their obligation to the country but would prefer the option of serving without weapons,” said a ministry spokesman who requested anonymity.

“Using the military the way we are now is not a lasting solution,” the spokesman said, “but the People’s Army is supposed to be there to serve the people, and that includes helping stabilize the economy.”

Attempts to fill the work void go beyond drafting help, however.

In some hard-hit sectors, such as health services, officials are cutting training time, recruiting people who changed professions, borrowing workers from other sectors and relying on volunteers.

Construction workers who were brought into Berlin from the provinces a year ago to help put up luxury hotels and sorely needed apartment houses are being sent home early, their projects in the capital half-finished.

East Germans often complain these days about the difficulty in finding craftsmen to make repairs, or, in some towns, even finding pediatricians to treat their children.

“What this means is that those of us who stayed behind work to the point of exhaustion,” said one East Berlin bellhop. “Everybody works lots of overtime.”

The service industry feels the labor pinch at a time when projects such as the construction of new hotels signal a keen interest by East Germany in building up tourism.

In East Berlin, according to Wollschlaeger, up to 5,000 waiters, chefs and other members of the service industry have left.

That also includes nurses, whose usual 2 1/2-year training period has been slashed by six months. Similarly, student teachers are being given their own classes months ahead of schedule.

When East Berlin newspapers published special telephone numbers for volunteers to call, thousands responded, officials said.

“Our office got more than 1,800 in two weeks, and that probably represents only about a fourth of the total,” Wollschlaeger said.

“Most people are volunteering to work nights and weekends on top of their regular jobs,” he said, adding that they are paid for the extra work. “A few are also retirees.”

But plenty of people feel that the hemorrhage of skilled workers and professionals to the West is merely a symptom of serious ills ailing the socialist labor system.

Average wages here are about 1,300 marks a month, a fraction of what skilled workers can earn in hard currency in neighboring West Germany, where one West German mark buys 20 to 30 East German marks.

“We have to look at better pay and management reforms,” Wollschlaeger asserted.

In Magdeburg, for example, transportation officials say they lost fewer than 20 bus and trolley drivers to the West.

Nevertheless, 91 of 313 streetcar jobs are unfilled, and 89--more than half--of the 160 city bus jobs are vacant.

“We’ve been in an emergency situation for more than a year,” said Dietmar Schollmeyer, city transportation director.

“Young people don’t want to learn this trade because the pay is low and the hours are lousy. You have to be here before 4 in the morning, you end up working weekends and holidays, and streetcar drivers only earn about 950 marks a month,” she said.

But the exodus to the West proved to be something of a blessing in disguise, Schollmeyer said, because it drew attention to an existing labor problem.

REFUGEE BACKLASH:Warm welcome for E. Germans in West begins to cool. A11