Monday, Jul. 18, 1960

WORLDWIDE SHORTAGE OF SKILLED MEN

Results: Increased Incentives, Decreasing Prejudices

A SKILLED man is often hard to find these days. The shortage is worldwide, and the reason is not the decline of craftsmen but the increased need in every country for more of them. The scramble for workers is having some odd effects on labor relations, work habits, and even on national prejudices.

Oddest of all, perhaps, is the situation in West Germany. There businessmen are frantically trying to find workers to fill 500,000 jobs. At the latest count, there were only 137,382 unemployed in the republic's entire work force of 24.6 million, an astounding .6% rate of unemployment. One Duesseldorf department store advertised for saleswomen, promised: "If you live out of town, we have pickup points. You meet interesting people, are offered free lunch and given a 15% discount on everything in the store."

In Britain, too, unemployment is down to 1.4% of the 24 million work force, lowest since 1957. In The Netherlands, the big Amsterdam department store Vroom & Dreesmann, also trying to attract salesgirls, offered "free dancing, music or foreign-language lessons." To keep government career men from straying to higher-paying commercial jobs, the Dutch government showers them with new titles and decorations to raise their social status. Many Australian firms now supply free transportation to and from work for employees, pay them for the traveling time. In Germany, a West-phalian farmer who could not keep his pea pickers down on the farm during harvest time offered a daily lottery with a $5 prize to the winner.

Denmark has such need for labor for essential construction projects that the government has banned private building. Sweden had 11,400 job opportunities waiting for metal workers in May, 5,000 more than a year ago. In France, De Gaulle's massive attempt to move industries into the provinces ran into the resistance of French workers loath to move to new areas. A precision-products manufacturer in Colmar complained: "We scoured eastern France for people, and we know they just don't exist."

Recruiting Abroad. Many a nation that once tried to keep foreign workers out is now recruiting abroad. There is such an acute shortage of tailors in the U.S. that employers are seeking them out in Italy. A little-known provision in the U.S. immigration laws provides that workers with skills needed in the U.S. are to be at the top of the list in getting admitted to the U.S. The current most wanted list favors doctors, veterinarians, nurses, tool and die makers, teachers and engineers. West Germany has set up recruiting bureaus in Athens, Madrid and Naples, this year imported 43,000 workers from Italy, 13,000 from Greece and Spain. The German postal administration even imported a group of Spaniards, rushed them through a language course to learn to deliver the mails. Within a few weeks the Spaniards were fluent enough in German to read signs outside factories that offered "the highest wages anywhere," turned in their mailbags for better jobs.

In The Netherlands, Rotterdam Shipbuilder Cornelis Verolme, who needs 1,800 workers, plans to import Chinese from Hong Kong, some of them refugees from Red China, train them and send them to new yards in Brazil and Ireland. The refugee from Communism, if he has the right skill, is a wanted man. East German workers often cross to West Berlin, look at the help-wanted ads, then write letters for jobs. If accepted, they move West.

A Share of Prosperity. Inevitably, the labor shortage has raised workers' wages and benefits, given them a greater share in the world's new prosperity and an appetite for more. One of the miracles of the West German postwar recovery was the way a highly unionized nation freely consented to businessmen's arguments that labor must keep its demands down so that German products would be competitive abroad. The sheen of this particular miracle is fading. Last week Karl Van Berk, president of West Germany's 520,000-member Coal Miners' and Energy Workers' Union, declared: "The time for a raise is now or never." Prosperous French Automaker Peugeot, whose parts plant is near the Swiss border, has traditionally relied on local farmers for workers. But this year, in full production and squeezed by a labor-tight France and a labor-short Switzerland, Peugeot had to grant a 5% wage boost and a bonus besides. In Copenhagen, when management gave in to a wildcat strike of women workers at the Tuborg and Carlsberg breweries, it was fined $15,000 (the maximum) by the Danish employers' association. The pressure to raise European wages is lessening the big gap between U.S. and foreign pay, making U.S. goods more competitive.

Meeting New Needs. Not every nation has gotten onto the peculiar needs of the changing technical world. France is still training nearly six times as many garment workers as it needs, but by 1965 it will need three times as many technicians as it turns out today. Unlike the U.S. shift to automation, European manufacturers are changing more slowly. In Germany, the complaint is that businessmen are relying on cheap labor rather than making costly capital improvements. In England, more alert to the danger that a continuing shortage of skilled men may cause a drop in production, the Federation of British Industries reported that "future increases in output must depend upon further capital investment designed to save labor."

Many a manufacturer finds that the only way to provide skilled workers is to train them himself. Pechiney, Europe's biggest aluminum producer, takes promising workers off the production line, sends them back to school at full pay to get the equivalent of an engineer's degree. In Brazil, such foreign auto firms as Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Willys-Overland, Ford and Volkswagen have not only set up their own factory training schools but send top technicians and potential executives to school abroad.

Reversing Old Prejudices. The new mobility of the world's labor force is reversing many old racial, religious or economic prejudices, and nations who linger with their old notions suffer. In Rhodesia, because of the shortage of white Europeans, native labor is gradually moving into positions of technical skill and responsibility long denied it. One of the reasons why Indonesia is floundering is that President Sukarno's government, after barring all Dutch technicians, is now driving out the Chinese and losing their skills and savvy. South Africa's industrial expansion requires 6,000 skilled immigrants a year, but it is getting only a trickle because it narrows its choice of immigrants to whites from The Netherlands, Germany and Britain, and discriminates against Catholics. Brazil's immigration laws, strict and shortsighted, allow immigrants to bring in only 22 lbs. of personal goods duty-free. To Ilmar Penna Marinho, a Brazilian foreign ministry official, "It is preposterous to oblige immigrants to come here with only their bed clothing and refuse to let them bring their tools and farming machinery."

The old prejudice that immigration will put domestic workers out of jobs still lingers on. However plentiful jobs may seem to be now, people still fear an uncertain future. But the International Labor Organization insists that alarmist fears are no longer justified. Tight-knit labor laws, the strength of unions, and the basic forces at work in the world's economic growth have eliminated. many of the dangers of over-migration.

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