The Body Snatchers

In West Germany only 187,199 Germans were looking for jobs last week, and 350,393 jobs were looking for workers. Said an official: "Three percent looking for work is considered full employment. We have .9%."

The tightest labor supply in booming Germany's history has employers at each other's throats not for customers but for workers--and there is no worry about the expansion in population that preoccupies many of the world's sociologists. One South German auto manufacturer, after hiring every idle man in 30 miles not confined to a wheelchair, sent a recruiting team through Germany offering competitors' workers big pay increases. Another employer offered to pay his men $9.52 to bring in a teammate. When a depressed Ruhr coal mine laid off 400 men, a Frankfurt rubber factory sent agents out to hire them. After a Swiss-owned electrical plant at Ladenburg burned down, competitors in Mannheim and Ludwigshafen rushed to the workers' homes with job offers before the ashes cooled.

The labor shortage has made refugees from East Germany welcome guests instead of mouths to feed. Many German employers keep fulltime agents at the refugee reception centers; they hire about 7,000 working-age refugees a month. Supplementing these immigrants, the government itself maintains a recruiting office in Italy, this year has obtained 15,000 Italians to work in Germany, in addition to 10,000 who came unassisted.

Many workers are using their new popularity to get wages double or treble the union rate, while some employers are cutting working hours. When Volkswagen opened its new Kassel truck plant, 3,000 workers were put on a 4O-hour week v. 44 in the usual contract. Other plants offer cut-rate housing, fatter pensions, and so-called Thirteenth Salary, i.e., a month's pay at Christmas, now almost standard in Germany.

To Germany's competitors the bidding up of German real wages is a relief. While Germany has boomed, the unions have been slow to demand higher wages. Now that German industry is being forced to share more of its prosperity with its workers, part of the trade advantage that has raised Germany's gold and dollar reserves past $5 billion will be lost.

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