Sunday 4 March 2012

vor ort, for you

Though I sincerely hope that it remains otherwise and the rare exception, changes in the landscape of the German jobs' market are being politicized as assaults and affronts on labour, with the same shrill cries of their American cousins. Ensuring a fair and level venue for business is one part of legislation, so is aiding those poisoned or exploited, but governments cannot outlaw poor business practices nor incessantly cushion bad decisions through subsidies and bailouts.

While I do not think any of the current transitions, brought before the public, like the decision to mothball Berlin Templehof airport or to expand the Stuttgart train-station (though many people do not like the outcome and perhaps the tyranny of the majority is out-of-place, deceived or bought), or ultimately transparent through mismanagement and complacency, I am afraid that support for the worker could all around degenerate into some campaign pledge or distinction, meaningless but divisive. Listed from minor to major in the terms of real impact--the latest bundle of changes have not yet been characterized as such but are good candidates for this new dispersing wake: the upcoming rounds of draw-downs of the US troop presence in stations across western Germany, the forced closure of more than half of the outlet of a chain of neighbourhood drug stores and energy reforms. None of these arrangements came to a crisis point without missteps or a narrow field of vision but the changes also will not be without consequences. Not only are German civilian employees facing the prospect of loss of jobs, communities hosting the Americans, from renters to retailers and restaurateurs will be losing a client base. And although this is not the biggest or the first transformation in US troop presence in Germany still the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, the incidence is magnified by the other changes in the jobs’ market and the Bundeswehrs own restructuring, ending mandatory service and the alternative civilian service that went along with conscription. The insolvent chain of drug stores, just before the state of its troubled finances were revealed, introduced as new marketing slogan, "Vor ort, for you," which is a confusion of German and English (vor ort means locally) and I am not sure what the aim was with this appeal.  It was, however, a good way to describe their important role in communities, especially smaller, more isolated ones with an aging population. These stores are everywhere and are vital in small villages, serving as an employer and selling to people that are perhaps not very mobile.
Their ubiquity probably made them a victim of their own success, anchors not only in rural areas but also in urban neighbour-hoods, saturating the market and not as agile as their competitors. Energy reform (called die Wende, like the term used to describe the turning points of Perestroika and the opening up of the former East German borders) was not invoked in the immediate aftermath of the disasters in Fukushima, plans to phase out nuclear power was already in place, but the tragedy in Japan certainly provided the impetus for Germany to wean itself off of the reactors at an accelerated pace. Redirecting the industry, however, will cost jobs--though hopefully create others, and the associated cost, making many resources more dear unexpectedly, is having unforeseen repercussions, like forcing subsidies for other alternative energy sources, like solar-power credits, to be cut. People should not strive to better the ecology merely in exchange for tax breaks, but loosing that incentive has consequences too. Like all my co-workers, I have had some idle angst about job-security, but I do feel confident that this change is only going to open up better opportunities. I stopped my whinging and feeling sorry for myself too, after learning of one co-worker's potential situation--not only does she work for the US army at a post slated to close, but her son and husband work at the nuclear power plant and her daughter works at one of the drug store franchises that will close. Her predicament seems much more dire, and already without polarizing politics, and though she is not being complaisant, counting only on government welfare and forces of advocacy, she is also not panicking.