Refugees may pose an 'opportunity' to address worker shortages

The German plastics industry regularly complains about professional staff shortages due to the demographic development: a “graying society” with increasing proportion of older people, due a low birth rate leading to Germany's population falling by millions in coming years.

Suddenly, an influx of large numbers of refugees from war-torn Middle East and African countries may help. But there is increasing discussion of whether integration of the new entrants to the country is a threat or an opportunity to relieve labor market pressure.

While mayors of 215 towns in the German state of North Rhine Westphalia wrote a joint letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel that their towns cannot handle any more refugees, chemical giant BASF SE announced plans to offer jobs.

BASF's new “Start Integration” program, announced Oct. 13, is a multi-point plan from the company which includes opening 50 positions at its hometown complex in Ludwigshafen as well as increasing involvement with existing charity projects for refugees.

“The flow of hundreds of thousands of refugees is a huge challenge for Germany and Europe, which we can only manage together,” BASF management board member Margret Suckale said in a news release. “With the new program, we are making a tangible contribution towards integration of refugees into the employment market.

“Each place is an opportunity, each place creates future prospects.”

Vitor Manuel Ribeiro Constâncio, vice president of the European Central Bank, talked in September of shrinking populations in many European states as “a form of collective demographic suicide” with far-reaching economic consequences. He said this has to be slowed down through immigration. Jens Weidmann, president of the Federal German national bank (Bundesbank), said he sees “a great challenge in the present refugee crisis, but also an opportunity, should new arrivals who stay in the labor market and society become integrated.”

So what is the stand of the German plastics industry on the issue? Thorsten Kühmann, managing director of the VDMA KuG association of German plastics and rubber machinery producers, said in a Sept. 28 interview that VDMA was still trying to “find a common line among member companies,” so it would not comment.

Kühmann said some VDMA member companies and their staff in border regions to Austria have been impacted by mass immigration into Germany. He mentioned specifically thermoforming machinery producer Kiefel GmbH in Freilassing and silo producer Zeppelin Systems in Passau.

In addition, a three week closure of all rail connections between nearby Salzburg in Austria and Passau, due to effects of mass immigration, ended less than one week before the Fakuma trade fair was set to begin Oct. 13 in Friedrichshafen, Germany. This disrupted rail commuter traffic between the countries, preventing employees getting to workplaces across the border by train. German railway operator Deutsch Bahn had indicated continued closure of the Salzburg-Munich rail connection for even longer, until Oct. 12.

Klaus Engel, chairman of Evonik Industries AG spoke during a panel discussion on German TV, saying the company was working with others in setting up refugee camps near Erbil in northern Iraq, a 1 million euro ($1.1 million) immediate aid program and a task force in Germany to cooperate with various aid charities.

He said the prime task is language lessons, “the prerequisite for training and getting people into employment. It is important that we don't eliminate jobs for the benefit of refugees, but that we do something on top for the refugees.”

Asked about costs for supporting unskilled refugees, Engel said that even 8 billion or 10 billion euros ($8.8 billion to $11 billion) going to asylum seekers in 2015 sounds gigantic, but just to compare with another number, 13 billion euros ($14.3 billion) are spent each year on candy.

Engel maintained asylum seekers don't take people's jobs away, they are just enjoying a constitutionally guaranteed right to asylum.

“There are many young people who come to us, it isn't only professors, that is clear. As a representative of industry, I just want to say one thing: one can view it from an economic point of view. I believe immigration is an investment in the future of our country,” Engel said.

He continued: “Diversity speaks for itself. When we research things at Evonik, we need inter-disciplinary and inter-cultural teams, we have them already. We can't answer important questions such as how to feed 8 billion people only with German scientists. We have 33,000 employees from 90 nations, that is live reality. I say quite clearly, to remove people's fear, we can do it and history shows us that we can.”