Industry promises to invite each and every school leaver in search of an apprenticeship for an interview. Companies may have pay up if they don't satisfy demand.
 
Tens of thousands of high school graduates face a shaky future in Germany because they have been unable to find vocational training programs to give them the foundations they need to embark on careers in skilled labor.
 
Representatives from the government, industry and trade unions squared off on Thursday to find solutions for the 35,000 young adults in search of vocational training. The result was a short reprieve for employers, while they scramble to find positions for the waiting thousands by the end of the year. Otherwise, companies may be fined for not offering enough apprenticeships. At least 20,200 traineeships are needed to meet the demand.
 
“It’s the proclaimed aim of our government to ensure that every school leaver gets an apprenticeship," Education Minister Edelgard Buhlman said after the meeting. "German industry has to react swiftly now. We’ve decided that it will be given another period of grace. But if we don’t see any tangible results in the weeks ahead, we’ll have to have some legislation to punish those who are not willing to offer apprenticeships. This is exactly what Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced in his government declaration in March, and we’re prepared to push this through, should we not see an improvement soon.”
 
Industry representatives agreed in the talks to invite "every individual" among the 35,000 high school graduates seeking apprenticeships for an interview. But they insisted they were already doing their part to improve the situation. Only 20 to 40 percent of the young people who had been offered an interview previously had signaled interested, Hans-Eberhard Schleyer of the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts said.
 
Inflexible youth
 
The president of the Confederation of German Employers' Association, Dieter Hundt, who refused to take part in the talks, has criticized young people for being too inflexible. He pointed out that nearly 15,000 positions were currently available, and said young people apparently didn't want those jobs. Metal working, textiles and the insurance business still had many vacancies for vocational training, he added. Young people should also be willing to move to another part of the country to get a traineeship, he said.
 
While it's true that 95 percent of school leavers have found a position over the past year, only 47 percent got an apprenticeship within a company. Though another one-fifth enrolled in training courses, the majority got a job to bridge the time until they could find an apprenticeship.
 
Companies often complain that apprenticeships are too expensive, particularly given the sluggish German economy. They also blame the educational system for producing school leavers who they say can hardly read or write and are difficult to properly train.
 
Time for action
 
German Trade Union Federation head Michael Sommer expressed little sympathy for industry's complaints. But he said he was unhappy with the government, too. "I expect that something will be done now," he said and called on the government to impose fines on companies that don't provide apprenticeships.
 
Industry has until the end of the year to try to find positions for the school leavers seeking them. Then the issue of financial punishment could become a reality for firms that don't offer traineeships.
 
“I’m not saying that every firm should be forced to offer apprenticeships," apprentice-in-waiting Jens Rothenberg told Deutsche Welle. "I realize that in the current economic situation it will be extremely hard for very small firms to do this. But the bigger ones should not be left off the hook. And if they don’t want to go the extra mile, they should be fined.”

In what’s being hailed as an engineering masterpiece, two important German shipping canals have been joined by a giant kilometer-long concrete bathtub. The new waterway near the eastern town of Magdeburg opens Friday.
 
Public infrastructure projects are notorious for taking longer than expected, but Germany’s new water bridge tying the Elbe-Havel canal to the important Mittelland canal, which leads to the country’s industrial Ruhr Valley heartland, was over 80 years in the planning.
 
Engineers first dreamt of joining the two waterways as far back as 1919. Construction to bridge the Elbe river near Magdeburg actually started in the 1930s, but progress was halted during the Second World War in 1942. After the Cold War split Germany the project was shelved indefinitely, but things were put back on track following reunification in 1990.
 
Taking six years to build and costing around half a billion euros, the massive undertaking will connect Berlin’s inland harbor with the ports along the Rhine river. At the center of the project is Europe’s longest water bridge measuring in just shy of a kilometer at 918 meters. The huge tub to transport ships over the Elbe took 24,000 metric tons of steel and 68,000 cubic meters of concrete to build.
 
The water bridge will enable river barges to avoid a lengthy and sometimes unreliable passage along the Elbe. Shipping can often come to a halt on the stretch if the river’s water mark falls to unacceptably low levels.
 
“It’s important to us to make the waterways attractive to industry as a safe and environmentally friendly transportation way,” German Transportation Minister Manfred Stolpe said at the opening ceremony on Friday, according to the Associated Press.
 
Lock bursts
 
But the project's start wasn't free of mishaps, as one of the new locks near Magdeburg burst on Thursday, eroding part of the bank and street. The damage will not hinder the use of the new passageway, however.
 
Barge captains will now be able to ship loads of up to 1,350 metric tons – the equivalent of 50 truckloads – over the 34-meter wide and 4.25-meter deep water bridge. Previously, ships could only be loaded with 800 metric tons.
 
Achim Pohlman, president of the eastern sector of the Federal Waterways Directorate, now expects shipping volumes to increase along the east-west route. Whereas in 2002 around four million tons were moved, some are now forecasting seven million tons of goods by 2015.
 
Critics, however, remain skeptical that such levels can ever be reached. That has led environmental group BUND to call for ending the further planned canal expansion of the Havel and Spree waterways near Berlin, which would allow larger Rhine barges to travel all the way to the German capital.
 
“The canalization of Havel and Spree for bigger Rhine boats would have fatal consequences for the natural water supply in Berlin and Brandenburg. Falling water levels would dramatically drain wetlands and Potsdam’s world cultural heritage would be threatened,” BUND said in a statement on Friday.  

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