Eurowelfare, Part 2: Germany’s fast track to a career

Eurowelfare, Part 2: Germany's fast track to a career

Jean Hopfensperger / Staff Writer

BONN, GERMANY -- Sandra Griffiths is part of a job training system that has helped shield generations of unskilled Germans from lives of poverty or dead-end jobs.

Her classroom is a trendy hair salon outside Bonn. Three days a week she shampoos and trims hair under the guidance of the shop's owner. Two other days, she attends high school where her math, art and other classes teach her to solve real problems she'll run into at work.

The 17-year-old earns about $360 a month and gets health insurance, disability insurance, social security contributions and a likely job when she finishes training in three years. More than 1.7 million other students enjoy a similar deal under Germany's internationally praised apprenticeship system -- a system that has drawn support from U.S. policymakers ranging from President Clinton to Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson as one route to improving the future of America's youth not headed for college.

"Even though some people have a low image of hairstyling, you can make a good career from this," said Griffiths, shampooing a customer's hair one Tuesday morning.

Added her boss, Ute Fuhs, who boasts that she has mentored more than 300 students in the past 35 years: "I'm able to train my own work force, so I can get really good employees. Plus, it's personally and professionally rewarding."

Training is U.S. priority

Although not typically considered a social safety net, a growing number of educators and economists argue that comprehensive vocational training is one step the United States should take to buffer less-educated citizens from poverty and keep them off welfare.

In fact, developing vocational training has become a top priority at the U.S. Department of Labor, said the department's chief economist, Lisa Lynch. For example, in 1994 the Labor Department and the U.S. Department of Education launched a School to Work Opportunities office specifically to finance new models for improving the job prospects of America's students. To date, the office has awarded about $110 million in grants to states and local governments to develop such programs.

"Training is not going to solve all our problems, but it's an important component to any strategy to address widening wage inequality and issues of poverty in this country," she said. "And it will be an integral part to any attempt to reform the welfare system in the future."

America's low-skilled workers have been hit hard in the past decade. Statistics show:

Among advanced industrial nations, U.S. workers with the lowest wages have suffered the biggest drop in real wages, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The United States is the only major industrialized country in which the least-skilled workers have suffered a drop in real wages since 1980. The real hourly wages of young men with 12 or fewer years of schooling dropped by about 20 percent from 1979 to 1989 -- and have continued to decline, said Richard Freeman, director of the labor studies program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Meanwhile wages for similar workers rose by about 20 percent in Germany, 8 percent in Britain and 3 percent in France, he said.

The income of families headed by someone under age 25 has declined at an annual rate of 2.5 percent since 1979, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based research group. And young families, those of child-bearing age, suffered the largest drop in income in the 1980s, according to the 1980 census figures.??

U.S. public opinion polls show support for training among Americans, particularly those who are wary of cash welfare programs. The key is to make sure that the skills are tied to those needed in the workplace and that higher training results in higher wages, Lynch said.

That's where the United States may borrow some ideas from northern Europe, where more than a half-dozen countries, including Switzerland, Scotland and Denmark, have comprehensive training systems for young workers.

A job path that works

Griffiths is much like the millions of U.S. students -- about 60 percent of high school graduates -- who don't enroll in a four-year college after high school. Her father is a truck driver; her mother is a homemaker. College degrees weren't taken for granted in her home. But getting a job was.

Unlike U.S. students, Griffiths can get paid, on-the-job training in one of 400 career fields. After three years, she'll be certified as a hairdresser and likely will find a job. About 85 percent of the students who finish the program find jobs, complete with unemployment, health care and family benefits.

It's a career path taken by about 60 percent of German high school students each year, said Hermann Schmidt, president of the Federal Institute for Vocational Training, which coordinates the programs and the research to determine work-force needs of the future.

"I don't have any friends who aren't moving into careers," said Griffiths. "Most went into apprentices -- car repair, TV technicians, nursing aide. Some guys went into the military."

Meanwhile salon owner Fuhs pays $1,750 a year to be a member of the training guild and another $70 per month per apprentice for their disability and health insurance. In exchange, she says, she's able to offer clients lower prices because she has a pool of lower-paid workers.

Reaching the lost

In many ways, Fuhs' salons are a training ground for the types of young people often lost in the U.S. work force.

"I've hired people from institutions, from orphanages," she said. "In those cases you work closely with the social worker. I've hired immigrants from 10 different countries. First it was Spain, then it was Afghanistan, then Turkish people. Now they're from Russia."

Likewise, the enormous Ford plant in Cologne, about 20 miles away, has made a point to train disadvantaged students, said Dieter Hinckelmann, a labor representative of the Ford Works Council, a joint labor-management body that decides issues ranging from work conditions to plant closings. The Ford plant employs 1,800 apprentices, said Hinckelman.

"There is a tendency to give apprenticeships only to people who are likely to get a job afterwards," said Hinckelman. "Ford helps everyone. And if someone isn't good enough in his job, he has a chance for another one."

New skills for older workers

German employers have offered apprenticeships for more than 100 years as part of the guild system. About 50 years ago, a formal system -- linking education, employers and the government -- was put in place, said Schmidt.

Only in the past decade has Germany embarked on a serious job retraining campaign for older workers -- particularly those in the former East Germany, where millions of workers have obsolete skills.

Last year the employment office spent $8.4 billion to retrain more than 1 million adults in East Germany, and another 300,000 workers in West Germany, Schmidt said.

The programs are funded through the unemployment tax paid by workers and their employers, he said.

Marianna Ruckert and her husband Hartvig moved from East Berlin to Bonn in 1989. Like thousands of other workers, Marianna found that her job training as a postal clerk in Berlin didn't open any doors in the West. The 42-year-old is now a student at TUV Akademie, a huge worker training center in a Bonn industrial park where several hundred students are studying everything from car mechanics to graphic design.

"The training has helped me find my way around western society," she said. "I now understand how the banking business works, how the economy functions and more about the political system. There are some gaps from us living under the eastern system."

Over here vs. over there

Unlike the German apprenticeship system -- rooted in close collaboration among business, labor and the government -- U.S. training schemes have been more fragmented and less connected to the needs of business and industry.

Job training for U.S. students not heading for college typically comes from "learning by doing" or by attending a technical school or community college after graduating from high school. A typical young man will hold seven jobs in the first 10 years in the work force, said Andrew Hahn, a Brandeis University professor who is a national consultant on youth training issues.

Meanwhile the main government-run programs are targeted not at youth but at various disadvantaged groups -- such as people on welfare, the disabled and dislocated workers. The programs historically have been too short and too unconnected to the needs of business and industry to produce big earnings for trainees, said Hahn. And wage gains from the programs have been modest.

"We serve people with services that are too short and often delivered at the wrong point in their lives," said Hahn. "And we often serve the wrong people. We tend to serve people who need it the least."

The people who really need training, said Hahn, are poor urban youth -- in particular, minorities. And they're falling through the cracks of the youth training in the United States.

The German system has its problems, too. It requires 15-year-olds to decide on a career track that will shape the rest of their lives. The certification process for getting a skill is rigid: a quick study can't simply learn by doing in a few months and get a job, said James Heckman, a University of Chicago professor and an expert on job training issues.

"The German system trains people narrowly for the job they are about to experience," says Heckman, who believes the frequent job-changing by young Americans offers workers good opportunities for advancement.

Germany offers far less training to "second chancers" -- people who want to return to college or switch careers. Here the United States holds a big lead over its global competitor, Heckman said.

Nonetheless, U.S. government officials and educators have been eying the apprenticeship model for years because high school graduates increasingly don't have the skills needed in the workplace and because of the poor wage prospects facing unskilled workers.

More than one model

Several years ago, the National Governor's Conference took a group of governors, including Carlson, to Germany. Minnesota is now among more than 20 states experimenting with apprenticeships, Schmidt said. About 300 Minnesota students are participating in 16 experiments across the state that link high school and technical students to on-the-job training.

"A lot of our employers complain that when they hire kids out of high school, they're not prepared to work," said David Olson, president of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. "It's definitely a problem. I chair the Governor's Workforce Development Council, which will take a close look at programs like apprenticeships."

Would Minnesota businesses be prepared to pick up the extra cost of preparing students?

"I'm not sure whether business would oppose paying more or not," said Olson. "The reason: The business community is very worried about the future workforce. And the business community already is investing in education -- through its property taxes. Plus we wind up spending more on retraining. So we pay twice."

Ford Motor Co. in the United States says its apprentice program, launched jointly by Ford and the United Auto Workers in 1941, has been worth the investment. The program doesn't train students; it targets new and experienced workers who want to upgrade their skills, said Ford spokeswoman Jennifer Flake. It's one of the many models that apprentice programs can take.

To graduate, apprentices must spend 576 hours in classroom training, mainly at the plant, and more than 7,400 hours of on-the-job-training, Flake said. They graduate with journeyman status in careers ranging from electricians to pipe fitters to tool and die makers. More than 1,500 workers are enrolled in the program, which has trained more than 23,000 workers, Flake said.

"The Ford-UAW apprenticeship program is considered one of the best in the country," said Flake. "The fact that we've trained so many people indicates its level of success."

The apprentice programs being tried in the United States do not precisely duplicate the German model. That would require the United States to change its entire high school system. And business and labor, which cooperate to run the German system, have a more strained relationship in the United States.

But the keys to Germany's success -- such as linking schools to the workplace and creating a bigger buy-in from the business community, labor and other partners -- hold lessons for the United States, supporters say.

"You build your own system," advised Schmidt. "I think it will take about 10 years. But then you'll have it -- an American way to help those noncollege-bound youth get a chance to have a profession."