There was a short piece in Forcus News (the German news magazine) this morning which interested me.
There's a lot of hype by both the SPD Party and the Merkel-led CDU Party over how to reassure the public on safety and health conditions. So there's been this 'promise' discussed by both in this coalition document drafted....to hire on more judges, more cops, and more nurses/caregivers.
If you ask most Germans....they will say that this is a super positive trend and they support it. Then you come to some Germans who are skeptical that this will really happen. So Focus discussed the issues in hiring these folks.
The nurse and caregiver deal? What's written up is the round number of 8,000 new and extra folks. If you bring this up with professionals.....they say this is 10-percent of what you really need. They insist across all of Germany....you need 80,000 more caregivers (old-folks homes, hospitals, home-visits, etc).
If you did come to agree with the 80,000 number....then I'd ask where exactly are you going to recruit or find these people. I do agree that there are plenty of unemployed folks, but most don't have the background or training. You could establish some program and entice young people into this profession but they'd expect some real salary structure, and frankly....this hasn't been a job that really paid much. In a curious way, the Germans have tried to go out beyond the border (into Poland, Czech, Romania, Bulgaria, and even the Philippines) to find people for this occupation. I would speculate that you could easily find 40,000 young Filipino women who have the basic background and could be given a one-year German language course to help them.
My guess is that in four years...most Germans will note the hiring of the 8,000 extra nurses and that was simply step one, and another 8,000 now need to be hired.
On the cops? The talk is around 15,000 cops to be hired around the entire nation. That's fine says the police unions, but you have to realize that thousands of German police will retire in the next couple of years and finding the 'right' people...the qualified people....will be nearly impossible. Some German states on this mission to recruit....already find that qualified applicants are limited in number, and they've got a serious problem.
The judge vacancies? The country suggests that 2,000 more judges need to be hired. Current judges are mostly amused over this number. Most young lawyers don't have interest in this profession because it simply doesn't pay at the level they'd be willing to accept. The suggestion is that you will have to increase judge pay scales.
For show and effect, all of this political talk of hiring is great to calm folks. The reality is that they probably will do a marginal job at this and trigger frustration in four years as the public figures out the shortfalls.
3 comments:
Yes, that is the thing. I was for 28 years a nurse in Germany, underpaid, overworked, no career path, seen as a low image job that everybody can do. Then I used the freedom of movement in the EU to go to UK, they took me with delight, my career suddenly took off, I had spare money at the end of the month, not only living from the hand to the mouth. There was suddenly 4 staff in a hospital ward on night duty (I was used to deal with 24 patients alone during the night in a public hospital in Germany). I moved to Australia, living here since 10 years now, got citizenship. The health system is superb, I have a career path, very good income and I am recognized as a valuable member of society. The biggest problem I see in Germany is, that the public is ZERO interested what's going on in the health system. While in UK and Australia the public is interested in the quality of the health system, the Germans think they have the top health system in the world. No horrible reports in the German news can make them think that something could be wrong there. And this we-are-the-best-attitude is not only attached to the health system. Time for the "Michel" to wake up...
Two years ago, I went on a trip to Australia, and at some point got into a conversation with a local guy on medical care. Most folks in Europe will whine to some degree about the lagging problems and how to fix things. This Australian guy didn't have a single whine. That kinda amazed (I'm from the US and even we have whines on healthcare). But he went on about the quality of Australian care and general attitude of folks. The doctor, the x-ray tech, the nurse, the orderly...they were almost like 'cousins'. After a while of traveling around the isle, you got the impression that everyone was cheerful and upbeat....it wasn't just medical business, but just some weird attitude that you rarely saw elsewhere.
A big issue in Germany is that you have no registration system there. There is no authority that looks into how you keep up with your professional standard eg training, conduct, health to work safely in your job. In UK, Australia and US you have to register and to renew your registration yearly, declare that you are able to do your nursing job properly, whether you did your yearly mandatory training hours, actually practiced in the job and how much hours, whether you followed your professional conduct, whether there is any legal/complaint action ongoing against you etc.
In Germany ZERO. You did your training for example 30 years ago and that's it, off you go for the rest of your life. This system allows employers to hire anybody and the opening of the east borders with getting cheap workers with minimum skills started a rats race with wages going to the bottom.
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