Germany Passes Controversial Traineeship Law

The law, which has been hotly debated for months, will go into affect this fall if German companies overall don't provide 15 percent more traineeships than the number of applicants. If that is the case, companies not meeting hiring targets will be forced to pay into a fund, which will then be redistributed to firms which take on the required number of trainees.

To avoid the fine, companies with over 10 employees must prove that at least seven percent of their employees are apprentices.

Skilled employees and tomorrow's experts "don't just fall from heaven," said Germany's Social Democratic Education Minister Edelgard Bulmahn (right) before Friday's debate and vote in the Bundestag.

"They must be trained," she said.

The vote passed 300-284 in parliament and does not need approval of the opposition-controlled upper house.

The government has been critical of companies that are able of offering traineeships, but do not. Last year, fewer than one-fourth of the 2.1 million German companies entitled to offer traineeships did so. The number of companies and young people entering into traineeship contracts last year fell to its lowest level since 1990, according to the Federal Institute of Vocational Education (BIBB).

Industry displeasure

Business groups, however, slammed the vote, saying it was counterproductive in that it would not create more trainee positions and that it was yet another bureaucratic hurdle an already burdened German business community would have to jump over.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democratic Party (SPD) has said some 300 personnel will be needed to process any possible fines.

"We are locked into fragile economic times and issuing threats isn't going to improve the climate for hiring," Martin Wansleben, managing director of the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK), told reporters. "This law is disastrous."

Opposition politicians were no more supportive. Guido Westerwelle of the business-friendly Free Democrats said instead of the law creating new traineeships, it would more likely drive more small and medium-size companies into the ground.

Hartmut Schauerte of the conservative Christian Democrats called the law a "catastrophic miscalculation."

"This is not a good day for vocational training in Germany," he told the ddp news agency.

Business or young people first?

But Green party parliamentarian Grietje Bettin criticized opposition politicians for only looking out for the interests of the business community and ignoring the needs of young people in need of training.

She said the fine should not be seen as a penalty, but rather as a fair and socially just method to create a balance between companies that do train and those that do not.

Nicolette Kressl of the SPD responded to opposition criticism by saying politicians from those parties had not suggested any alternative measures to increase the overall number of traineeships on offer.

The move to pass some kind of legislation gained momentum last year, when 35,000 people who sought traineeships failed to find one. There were 182,000 apprenticeships in total last month, about 27,000 lower than the year before, according to Germany's Federal Labor Agency.

In a survey carried out by the University of Dortmund, 42 percent of German parents asked said they worried that their child would not find "an appropriate traineeship" after leaving school, up from 32 percent a decade ago. In the eastern part of Germany, 24 percent were against the imposition of fines on companies which did not sufficiently train. In western Germany, only 19 percent were against such a system.