He goes on to describe how the demanding but fair German apprenticeship program works based on personal experience: "After I left school, first, three to five years of strict apprenticeship [work and school] was required. Your boss constantly looked over your shoulder and is rating you month by month.
“After that I got my 'Gesellenbrief' [apprenticeship diploma] after passing a very tough test, which gives you for the first time the right to work without supervision in your workplace. After the mandatory four years of practice, I applied for the 'Meisterbrief,' or master craftsman certificate. That takes one year and countless weekends and evening schools to prepare. During my test, about 85 percent of my fellow students failed to pass."
"My Meisterbrief was for Radio and TV, and this test covered everything about running a company, educating young people, and your own technical skills. After a daylong test in theory, I got 15 minutes to repair five TV sets.
"Only the Meisterbrief gives you the right to run your own business and train co-workers. The Meisterbrief is equal and more to the Ingenieur."
He concludes: "Whenever I applied for a job, both briefs were always a door-opener. You are not just full of theory, but practice as well."
So what does this mean in practice? "When you bring your car to a repair shop in Germany, only qualified people touch it. Sure, it may cost more, but I feel better."
The German vocational system is deeply ingrained in the country's culture. Years of study and training mean German workers are highly skilled and motivated. Employers understand this, and have reacted to the global economic slowdown in ways fundamentally different from their US counterparts. Kurzarbeit is a prime example.
Perhaps it wouldn't work in the US. On the other hand, we've got little to lose by at least trying it.
For more on Kurzarbeit and new ways of thinking about work, click here.
I suppose I risk being lumped in the "socialist" category when I say I'm all behind this idea of Kurzarbeit, whether it's following the German's lead or just applying some basic common sense. My husband owns a small business and a couple of years ago when things got tight, he put into play a similar practice and had all existing employees go to an abbreviated work week obvioulsy with a reduced pay scale. Difficult for all, but better than seeing some of their trusted colleagues hit the chopping block. When business improved, the hours were reinstated and the team moved on from there.
I would hope in this day and age of economic and job uncertainly, employees would value this philosophy and make it their goal to be as productive and loyal as possible. Then it can be a win-win for both sides.
During a recession in the 1970s, Hewlett-Packard cut the employee work week and pay by 10% to save jobs. When the economy improved, the work week and pay were restored to 100%. It worked for HP; most employees preferred to "tighten their belts" and keep their jobs.
Employees have a right to view this concept with a bit of skepticism; the concept is almost unheard of in this country. Labor is one of the highest costs to a business; axing people when times get tight is the easiest, if not smartest, thing to do to maintain that bottom line.
Workers would seem to be just another commodity, managers can always get more.
One way companies might improve their image is to not seek H-1B visa workers any more. This concept (training during slow times) is an honest approach, H-1B is not.
The concept proposed would be a breath of fresh air.
There is one trusim that I have never found not to apply: Management always does what is easy. There are probably a hundred different things that management can do when business begins to fall off, the easiest one is the layoff. It doesn't really take a lot of effort for a layoff, in fact, most of the time I've detected a randomness to the selections as if management took no time to discover who contributes. Generally the pattern is who makes the most money or who's the oldest.
Given past experience, this German method is way past the intelligence level of US management. It's way too much effort.
True, but not in such a destructive way as management. When we do our processes that create the product, we try to make things as simple as possible but we don't compromise performance. We examine the impact of our changes, I've rarely seen management do that. I cannot count the number of times I've heard "We'll monitor the situation" or "We'll see what happens." After that point, action is never taken.
TJ, I agree with you on this one. While the concept seems to have appealing aspects, it could add to an underlying resentment among some workers. The drive to achieving productivity and excellence is also not completely linked to time worked.
Great example, Beth. I have recently heard stories about fewer workers leaving their jobs because they know how tough the job market has become. One report called them "disgruntled" workers, read: unproductive. It seems to be any business owner worth his/her salt can determine whether or not to keep a productive worker in good times and bad.
The H-1B issue is a separate can of worms in this debate. While I understand that we don't want to lose engineers trained in the U.S. at great expense, I still find it very hard to believe that employers can't find at least some of the same skills within the existing U.S. workforce.
I tried to do something like this at a previous job. I had an extremely highly skilled technician who I had been training to take on more and more responsibility. Unfortunately, he also had the least amount of seniority, so when it came time to make layoffs, he was the first on the list. It seemed to like a bad idea to lay him off after investing so much time in training him, so I thought perhaps I could work out some kind of Kurzarbeit scheme. This was a mistake. Upper management thought I was being soft-hearted, and the union thought I was trying to screw them. In the end, I had to lay him off. As I had suspected, by the time the company started recalling laid-off workers, he had found another, better job.
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