A temporary solution? Germany's labour market develops a second tier
Martina Metsch is a 34-year-old Berlin-based architect whose career illustrates one of the biggest dilemmas facing Germany today, as the forces of globalisation reshape its highly regulated job market.
Ten years ago, anyone with Ms Metsch's qualifications would have had little trouble landing a full-time employment contract. Yet since graduating in 2001 she has changed jobs nine times, alternating between internships, fixed-term contracts and self-employment. Stable, secure work, she says, "is a distant dream".
She is one of a rapidly growing number of Germans who have become exceptions to the rule in a country famous for its tough labour laws and support for the rights of workers. More and more of her fellow citizens are finding the search for full-time, permanent employment a fruitless quest. Those dubbed "atypical workers" in the jargon of economists are becoming the norm.
There is still plenty of evidence to support the view that Germany's problems stem from its rigid labour market. A recent World Bank survey, for example, ranked the country 129th out of 175 on the ease of employing workers. But beside the market for full-time, permanent jobs, a new one characterised by flexibility and low costs has emerged and is fast upstaging the former.
The changes have been brought about by global competition, new legislation and the pressure of high unemployment: "Germany is definitely a two-tier labour market now," says Kai Deininger at the German arm of Monster, the online job exchange. "This is particularly true for first-time jobseekers, regardless of their qualifications."
For German companies this is good news. The steady rise in employment registered since the beginning of the year shows that the labour market's increased flexibility is having a positive effect. Over the short term, it means the robust recovery currently under way should generate more jobs than previous economic rebounds.
Yet this change also threatens to reshape the German welfare state and undermine social cohesion. And for workers, the benefits are ambiguous: more jobs, but worse jobs.
One way to describe Germany's changing labour market would be as a railway train with two classes (and 36.5m people) on board. The first-class carriages represent the traditional labour market. Those with a premium ticket enjoy full-time employment, extensive legal protection against dismissal and relatively high pay. While they contribute fully to the social security system, they are entitled to generous health and pension benefits.
For decades, this was the world the majority of German workers inhabited. Sector-wide wage agreements struck at regular intervals between business federations and trade unions often provided better working conditions than those guaranteed by law.
In recent years, however, the structure of the job market has changed radically. The "first-class" cabins on the train have become more exclusive while an ever larger number of second-class carriages have been added to the train. In these Spartan coaches, one is easily hired and easily fired; pay tends to be low - at times far below even the UK's modest minimum wage; contracts are struck for fixed periods; part-time work and self-employment are widespread; paid holidays are not always provided and Christmas bonuses unheard of.
Such "split" job markets exist in other European economies but the rise of "atypical" employment that Germany has witnessed is without equivalent. Government figures show that German businesses shed well over 1m "first-class" jobs between March 2002 and May 2006, as the economy slowly emerged from stagnation. In the same period, they created almost exactly the same number of second class jobs.
While "first-class" positions accounted for 65 per cent of all the jobs in the economy in 1968, this substitution means they now make up less than half of the total. In the stagnation of 2000-04, companies achieved "unprecedented flexibility in shaping their work-force", says Jan Kuhnert, head of Loquenz, a management consultancy. "What you see happening is the transformation of the institutional relationship between employer and employee into a service relationship."
German trade unionists are growing uneasy about the social implications of this shift. "What worries us," says Johannes Jakob, head of the labour market policy unit at the DGB trade union federation, "is not the existence of two labour markets but the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult for workers to pass from one to the other".
This cleaving of Germany's labour market was made possible largely by changes in the law: under pressure after unemployment rose to a postwar high, the then government of Chancellor Gerhard Schr?der ushered through a series of reforms in 2003 introducing incentives for the long-term unemployed to seek work and for companies to hire low-paid workers part-time. It also made it easier to employ temporary workers and offer fixed-term contracts and it eased dismissal protection.
One effect of these reforms, says Klaus Abberger of the Ifo economic institute, was to allow companies to "outsource" the risks and additional costs inherent in Germany's tough employment protection laws.
Freed from their regulatory shackles, temping agencies recorded a boom after 2003. In the following two years, while Germany's labour market as a whole was shrinking, the number of temporary workers shot up from 752,532 to nearly 1m.
"Companies face tough competition and rising volatility. They need this flexibility," says Volker Enkerts, chairman of Flextime, a Hamburg-based temporary work agency. "These changes you see on the labour market are a by-product of globalisation."
German companies - used to adapting to changes in demand by modifying the lengths of shifts - now favour the "external" flexibility provided by temporary workers, freelancers and fixed-term contracts. Airbus, the troubled aircraft maker, for instance, said last week it would start its restructuring by shedding 1,000 temporary workers out of the 7,300 it employs in Germany, who make up more than one-third of its workforce in the country.
"Mounting international competition means companies can no longer afford the extra costs of maintaining a permanent overcapacity in order to smooth out short-term variations in demand," says Markus Promberger of the IAB institute, part of the Labour Agency.
For Stefan Bielmeier, an economist at Deutsche Bank, the two-tier structure is clearly visible at company level: "Companies are increasingly sticking to a core staff where most of their knowhow is concentrated and which they carry through the cycle. Next to this is a layer of atypical workers that fluctuates in response to changes in the business cycle."
The widening gulf between labour-market "insiders" and "outsiders", however, is fuelling concern about the social and even the macro-economic consequences. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development last month warned the government against a deregulation policy focused exclusively on low-qualified and marginal groups. "Single-sided deregulation of employment protection law in favour of highly protected regular employment contracts," the organisation wrote, "risks creating a dual labour market with an increasing share of marginal or unstable jobs."
Stagnating wages, it said, could in addition undermine the financial stability of the social security system, which is funded through levies on employers and employees calculated as a percentage of gross wages.
Part-time contracts now account for 24 per cent of all jobs, double the level of 1991. Likewise, the proportion of low-paid jobs, which are partly or wholly exempted from social security contributions, rose from 2.4 per cent in 1985 to 17.4 per cent last July.
Polls by the Federal Statistical Office put the number of workers on fixed-term contracts (of six months to two years) at 3.2 per cent of the total in 1985, 10.8 per cent in 1991 and 14 per cent last year. In the 15-to-30 age bracket, they now make up 42 per cent of all jobs.
Experts worry that Germany's incomplete liberalisation of its labour market could undermine the traditional relationship between higher employment and higher consumption, an unwelcome development since consumer spending remains the Achilles heel of the German economy. "If this boom reflects mainly an increase in temporary contracts, you must wonder whether people on such contracts will have a lower propensity to consume their income than others," says Elga Bartsch, economist at Morgan Stanley.
Looking further into the future, Deutsche Bank warned last month that disparities between the two labour markets could erode the skills of "second-class" travellers in the medium term. "If participants in the secondary labour market do not get a chance to increase their skill levels such that they eventually meet the requirements in the primary market, where jobs are to a greater extent exposed to international competition, jobs in the latter may simply disappear."
With Germany going through a phase of reform fatigue and falling unemployment eating away at politicians' appetite for further deregulation, the likelihood of new reforms that would lower the barrier between first- and second-class workers seems low.
The sceptics may be wrong to dismiss Germany's labour market as crippled by rigidity. But they may be confirmed in their pessimism, if not their analysis, if the country's leaders fail to finish the work they have started.
德国出现两级就业市场 (上)
马
丁娜?梅奇(Martina Metsch)是一位34岁的柏林建筑师，她的职业生涯反映出德国当今面临的最大困境之一。目前，全球化的力量正重塑该国高度监管的就业市场。
10年以前，任何一个具备梅奇这种资历的人，都能毫不费力地获得一份全职工作合同。然而，自2001年毕业以来，她已经换了9份工作，在实习生、固定期限合同和自雇之间变换。她表示，稳定可靠的工作“是一个遥远的梦”。
在以严格的劳动法和保障员工权利著称的德国，越来越多的人成了例外，梅奇就是其中之一。目前，越来越多像她这样的德国民众发现，寻觅一份全职永久工作是一种没有结果的诉求。在经济学家行话中被称为“非典型员工”的人们，已变成典型。
仍然有大量证据支持以下看法：即德国的问题源自于该国僵化的劳动力市场。例如，在世界银行(World Bank)最近一次关于雇用员工方便程度的调查中，德国在175个国家中名列第129位。然而，除了全职永久工作市场，还有一个以灵活性和低成本为特点的新市场正在兴起，并迅速超越全职永久市场。
全球竞争、新的立法和高失业率压力促成了这一变化。“德国目前的确存在两级劳动力市场，”网上就业交流中心Monster德国分部的凯?戴宁格尔(Kai Deininger)表示。“对于初次求职者尤其如此，不管他们的资历如何。”
对于德国企业而言，这是个好消息。自今年初以来，登记就业人数稳步增长，这表明劳动力市场灵活性的增强正产生着积极影响。短期内，这意味着，与以往的经济复苏相比，目前的强劲复苏应会创造更多的就业机会。
然而，这种变化也有可能重塑德国的福利状况，并削弱社会凝聚力。对于员工来说，由此带来的好处相当模糊：工作机会多了，但工作质量也差了。
用一种方法来形容德国变化中的劳动力市场，那就是一辆设有两种等级车厢（和3650万乘客）的火车。头等车厢代表着传统的劳动力市场。那些手持头等厢车票的人享有全职工作、使其免遭解雇的广泛法律保护，以及相对较高的薪资。他们为社会保障体系缴纳全额费用，因此有权享受高额的医疗及养老福利。
数十年以来，这是大多数德国员工所生活的环境。整个行业范围内的薪资协议，通常会提供优于法律保障的工作条件，这些协议由企业联合会和工会定期签订。
然而，近年来就业市场结构已发生了根本性的变化。火车“头等”厢的排外性越来越强，车上多了一个“二等”厢，其人数日益增多。在这些斯巴达式车厢里，人们很容易找到工作，也很容易丢掉工作；工资往往较低――有时甚至会远远低于英国最低工资水平；合同期限通常是固定的；兼职工作和自雇的情况相当普遍；企业不都提供带薪休假；年终奖金则闻所未闻。
这种“割裂的”就业市场在其它欧洲经济体中也存在，但德国出现的这种“非典型”就业的崛起却是独一无二的。官方数字表明，随着德国经济体缓慢地脱离停滞状态，德国企业在2002年3月到2006年5月之间裁掉了逾100万份“头等”工作。在同期内，它们创造出了几乎同等数量的“二等”工作。
1968年，“头等”职位在德国经济体的所有工作中占65%，上述替代意味着，头等职位所占比例目前不到总数的一半。在2000年到2004年的停滞期，企业“在确定劳动力结构方面体现了前所未有的灵活性，”管理咨询公司Loquenz的负责人扬?库纳特(Jan Kuhnert)表示。“你目前所看到的，是雇主和雇员之间的关系，从制度上的关系向一种服务关系的转变。”
德国工会人士对上述转变的社会影响越来越感到不安。“令我们担心的，”DGB工会联盟劳动力市场政策部负责人约翰内斯?雅各布(Johannes Jakob)表示，“不是存在两个劳动力市场的问题，而是这样一个事实：员工从一个市场转入另一个市场的难度越来越大。”
德国劳动力市场之所以可能出现这种分裂，很大程度上要归因于法律的变化：在失业率升至战后高点的压力下，时任总理格哈德?施罗德(Gerhard Schr?der)的政府在2003年进行了一系列改革，鼓励长期失业者找工作，并鼓励企业雇用低薪兼职工人。同时，政府还使雇用临时工和提供定期合同变得更加简便易行，同时还降低了保护员工免遭解雇的力度。
Ifo经济研究所(Ifo economic institute)的克劳斯?阿贝格尔(Klaus Abberger)表示，这些改革的影响之一，就是允许企业把德国严格的雇佣保护法中存在的风险和附加成本“外包出去”。
摆脱了监管桎梏，临时雇佣机构在2003年之后实现了创纪录的繁荣。接下来的两年，在德国劳动力市场整体萎缩的同时，临时工数量却从75.2532万人一跃升至近100万人。
“企业面临着严酷竞争和日益增加的不稳定性。它们需要这种灵活性，”汉堡的临时工作机构Flextime董事长福尔克尔?恩克茨(Volker Enkerts)表示。“你在劳动力市场上看到的这些变化，是全球化的一个副产品。”
