• blackbeans@lemmy.zip
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      3 hours ago

      In Germany, there are truly many vacancies in some areas. For instance, there are around 35k open vacancies for nurses and this number is expected to grow to around 150k in the coming years as the baby boom generation is getting older. Most Germans just don’t like the prospect of working irregular hours and wiping elderly patients’ butts, even though wages and secondary conditions are improving for nurses.

  • TheObviousSolution@thebrainbin.org
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    23 hours ago

    It could also turn to other places in Europe for them. But that’s the thing, isn’t it, this isn’t really about a shortage of workers, it’s about not wanting to pay them more.

      • Jimbel@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        I guess he means Indians are all good. But i guess Indian workers are paid less than workers from Germany or certain other countries

      • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        I like Indians just fine. I don’t like to be connected to a call center in India because it is generally a waste of time.

    • Marcomunista@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      20 hours ago

      There’s a demographic crisis in every EU country. There’s a shortage of people across Europe. So Germany can’t just attract other EU citizens and drain the other member states of their population.

      • TheObviousSolution@thebrainbin.org
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        19 hours ago

        The “crisis”, is that they all want cheaper workers, not that their particular workers aren’t cheaper than their neighbors. It’s a race to the bottom. If there’s a shortage of workers, their wages rise, and people are interested in their jobs but then they would have to cut the profits.

        Germany can and has attracted other EU citizens. They want cheaper. Butchers’ shop and “critical skilled” are oxymorons. The Indians coming into Germany are working for the big shops and factories, not opening their own. It is a shift towards a migrant laborer based economies while those that own the actual assets get rich for relatively little effort, like with housing and the shift from owning to renting. The gap just keeps getting bigger.

        • blackbeans@lemmy.zip
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          3 hours ago

          It’s true that they probably will not start their own butcher’s shop. Then again, what do Germans need? Most want affordable meat, which requires cheap labor. They want affordable houses, which requires cheap construction workers. They want affordable logistics and shipping, which requires cheap personnel.

          These jobs are never going to get a top loan because that would cause inflation for everyone. And most Germans aren’t even motivated to work there even if the wages were good, because the work is hard/irregular/dirty.

          Western European countries have always needed foreign workers, many of which have become part of our society such as the people from Turkey that came here decades ago. If Germany wants to continue without their foreign workers they would be immediately having around 8 million vacancies even by removing the people who don’t have a citizenship yet. Germany has one of the most aging populations in the world, there’s not a chance those vacancies will be filled without foreign workers.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          You seem genuinely unaware that countries like Germany legitimately have less than replacement birth rates. I don’t discount your point about paying people more, but I can acknowledge both these realities and you can too. While the class struggle with billionaires rages on, there actually are real demographic challenges.

          • TheObviousSolution@thebrainbin.org
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            5 hours ago

            The reason people are also having less children is precisely because of the way quality of life is tanking.People aren’t suddenly less able to reproduce, they just don’t want to go race to the bottom to have children. Rather than allowing societies time to adjust and compensate for these changes, people in their governments are forcing the race to the bottom.

            The immigrants coming for these jobs are willing to drop their quality of life and make sacrifices like renting shared living spaces and having to work under worse conditions. Once we are at the bottom, the same problem will happen, just with lowered standards. This ends up making the “developing” countries balance out with the “developed” ones, which wouldn’t be so bad if the politics didn’t tank as a net loss. It’s always requires more effort to to build up a healthy political environment than to take it down.

        • Marcomunista@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          18 hours ago

          The fact that Germany has attracted people from other EU countries in the past does not mean it will be able to do so forever.

          The problem of underpaid labor can be solved by increasing oversight of businesses and punishing employers who exploit these people, because the crime is exploitation, not accepting appalling working conditions because one has no other choice.

          In Italy, there are many Indians who own their own businesses, such as electronics stores or restaurants—to name the most common ones. It seems strange to me that in Germany they are only employees and not business owners.

  • otp@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    A shortage of workers, or a shortage of willingness to pay local workers fair wages?

    • WanderingThoughts
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      1 day ago

      Both. There is a shortage of children as Germany’s fertility rate is below replacement for a long time now, and the kids they do have study for a high wage job.