WEST GERMANY: Men Wanted

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Prospering West Germany, even though it has absorbed n million people from the East since war's end, and is currently taking in 25,000 escapees a month from across the Iron Curtain, is shorthanded.

Overcrowded Italy, for all the economic revival it has enjoyed since World War II, seems to be chronically stuck with 2,000,000 unemployed.

Last week the two countries put their problems together and reached an agreement. Starting next March, West Germany will take up to 100,000 Italian workers, most of them unskilled, who may stay up to one year. They will be paid on the same scale as German workers, and enjoy the same working conditions. German employers must furnish their housing, of which Germany's supply is also short. Germany will pay family bonuses even when the Italian leaves his family at home, a feature not included in Italy's similar arrangements with France and Belgium.