Small and medium-sized companies in eastern Germany consider more training and further education as well as immigration to be decisive in combating the shortage of skilled workers and are demanding more state support. “The order books of IT service providers are full, our member companies can usually not even dream of new hires in this area,” said Burkhardt Greiff, the spokesman for the interest group of the employers’ associations of East Germany and Berlin, in Potsdam on Wednesday. Politics must support education and training. When recruiting skilled workers through immigration, an “excessive bureaucracy” must be questioned. He warned that the lack of suitable workers will be a major obstacle to the restart after the Corona crisis.
The Ampel-Coalition wants to counteract the shortage of skilled workers with a more liberal immigration policy. “The new coalition has resolved to be more liberal in this area,” said the acting minister of labor, Hubertus Heil (SPD), who was connected via video. Heil referred to the law on the immigration of skilled workers, which has existed since 2020. The SPD, Greens and FDP want to expand the law. But: “The best ideas for qualified immigration are useless if we are not a country that also welcomes people who we can use.”
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Not just masters, but also a couple of masters
Heil also demanded that vocational training should become more attractive. “This country not only needs masters, it also needs a few masters.” Vocational schools should be well equipped digitally.
Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD) considers closer cooperation and more self-confidence to be necessary. “We have to network even more closely,” said Woidke. This is something “that we can still learn from Wessis”. “We are also not yet sufficiently self-confident in our demeanor.”
Brandenburg’s Economics Minister Jörg Steinbach (SPD) called for a greater focus on future industries such as health technology. “I think we have to convey these professions in a completely different way, then we have a chance there to actually inspire young people.” He called it a mistake that in the past the Abitur had been heavily relied on as an educational path. Even with dual training you get competitive life prospects. It is also necessary to better manage the “lane change” from refugees to skilled workers.
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More professionalism in the search for employees
In a study in October, the Competence Center for Securing Skilled Workers at the Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft recommended more professional HR work to small companies in order to find employees. The most frequent reasons for a need for improvement are a lack of specialist knowledge and a lack of financial resources.
More than 100 entrepreneurs met at the East German Entrepreneur Day in Potsdam – most of them in attendance. According to its own information, the interest group is an amalgamation of regional associations that represents the interests of around 22,000 entrepreneurs, craftsmen, self-employed and freelancers in small and medium-sized businesses.
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