Business Abroad: Wanted: Men at Work

While the U.S. worries about finding jobs for its unemployed (see above), West German industrialists send agents roaming the world to recruit workers. Last week, in one of their longest reaches yet, the Germans signed up 700 Japanese to work in the coal mines of the Ruhr.

West Germany has one of the world's lowest unemployment rates: .6% of a labor force of 21 million. To keep their economy expanding, the West Germans last year imported more than 400,000 non-German workers, and this year the figure is expected to be much bigger. Nearly 5,000 Italian and Greek workers arrive each week through Munich alone. Others pour in from Spain, France, The Netherlands, Austria, Yugoslavia—even Turkey.

All this is in addition to the 8,000,000 who have slipped across the borders from East Germany and the satellites in the past 16 years and taken jobs.

Most of the foreign workers are pleased with their lot; at government insistence, they get all the benefits that German workers do, including wages that start at a legal minimum of 65¢ an hour. But one West German recruiting scheme hit a snag last week. Badly in need of trained labor for his Hamburg shipyards, German Tycoon Willy Schlieker wants to hire up to 500 Scottish shipyard workers who have been threatened with layoffs or slow business at home. But despite his willingness to import a British cook along with them, Schlieker has not been able to get even an advance party of 60 Scots. British newspapers and trade unions argue that Britain itself, except for isolated pockets in Scotland and Northern Ireland, will soon be facing a labor shortage. Says Schlieker: "From some of the comments in British newspapers, you'd think I was trying to kidnap the men."