Companies are going bankrupt, more low-wage workers are becoming victims of mass layoffs. The mission of job centers and employment agencies is to “quickly get the unemployed back to work.” However, there is no legal right to placement in one’s trained profession or even to state-funded retraining. In addition, low wages for apprentices, often not sufficient for a living, are a further issue. It is not surprising that an increasing number of employees are working without a degree – while the economy complains about a shortage of skilled workers.
Education disaster fuels low-wage sector
According to a representative study by the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), presented to the Handelsblatt, about six million employees work in a job for which they do not have a degree – and the trend is rising. These people often work in the low-wage sector, are often dependent on additional state support and have a hard time getting out of the misery, said DGB’s deputy chairwoman Elke Hannack to the newspaper.
The education disaster starts in school: Currently, less than half of the around 780,000 annual high school graduates start an apprenticeship or a university program immediately. A total of 250,000 of them end up in a transition system, such as a vocational preparation year or other measures to close learning gaps. Up to 100,000 young people even drop out of school without a degree.
The DGB attributes this to a lack of state support. The concept of youth employment agencies, of which there are 366 across the country, is good, but they are not adequately financed to fulfill the tasks assigned to them. Germany recently introduced a law giving a right to catch up on a vocational degree, but the law seems to be a mere paper tiger, as job centers and agencies hardly use it.
No money for alphabetization
Another figure cited by the trade union confederation sounds like a grave setback in the once “land of poets and thinkers”: The studies show that the number of functionally illiterate people, despite a support program, is still extremely high. So, about 6.2 million employees in the Federal Republic of Germany cannot read or write adequately – that’s 12 percent. This is not just about migrants who never received adequate language training.
The 2016-introduced program for alphabetization is set to end next year and has apparently achieved little. It’s no surprise: only 180 million euros was allocated to the education ministry to enable people to learn reading and writing – that’s not even 30 euros per affected adult in ten years.
A toothless wish paper
The “social partnership”-tamed DGB, which had approved the Agenda 2010, including Hartz IV and thus had helped to expand the German low-wage sector, reacted to its current findings as expected: with a “program” more precisely an eight-point plan, well knowing that no current federal government will implement it.
In its wish paper, the umbrella organization proposes, among other things, to “expand the vocational training guarantee and to strengthen the catch-up of vocational degrees.” The DGB also demands a “training part-time” i.e., half a day of work, half a day of retraining and state-funded retraining. The underfinanced and obviously unsuccessful “Alphabetization Decade” should be continued by the new federal government from 2026 onwards. Moreover, Germany should recognize foreign qualifications more strongly and validate work experience in migrants.
Where are the labor struggles?
With a corresponding degree, “good work is more likely” the DGB explains. This, however, is no guarantee for a job with a good wage, from which those dependent on it can live well. Especially since the German labor market has been becoming increasingly precarious since the turn of the century: pseudo-self-employment on a fee basis, limited contracts, poorly paid internships, or limited employment for projects are also becoming the rule in academic sectors.
Furthermore, it seems that a huge demand still exists in the low-wage sector. When the industry cuts jobs, employment agencies and job centers still prefer to place people in these sectors. Those who reject these “offers” without having something better in the pipeline must reckon with existence-threatening sanctions – the presumed future Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz plans to increase these even more, according to his own statements.
A class society in the crisis-ridden capitalism is not a pony farm, one could counter the DGB. Perhaps one should remind its officials of this and that all labor rights are the result of labor struggles. Labor struggles were once the core task of trade unions – without them, it can only go downhill.