E.E.C. ponders value of migrant labour

Press, 4 January 1978, Page 16

E.E.C. ponders value of migrant labour

By

THOMAS LAND

in Geneva

West Germany must reopen its gates to large numbers of foreign labourers if it is to achieve more than a modest rate of industrial expansion according to an authoritative study published in Geneva by the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Europe (E.C.E.). “If the experience of West Germany and Turkey can be taken as a basis of general conclusions,” the study asserts, "the migration of workers within Europe has brought substantial economic benefits to both the sending and receiving countries.” The report’s conclusion conflicts with the policies of several West European countries which are trying to reduce their populations of “guest” workers as a means of combatting unemployment among the natives. It tends to support the argument of the European Economic Community headquarters in Brussels which seeks a measure of political power for the resident foreigners. "Although high rates of have led

most of the host countries to restrict severely or to stop completely the inflow of new foreign labour, the fact is that large numbers of immigrant workers remain, and the efforts that are being made to get economic recovery under way may soon set the movement going again,” the document predicts. The report was prepared by the E.C.E. secretariat for a special meeting in Geneva on the development of international trade, intended to evaluate the scope for worker migrations in the future. In an analysis of the long-term labour requirements of West Germany, the study concludes that “the achievement of even a modest but stable growth in the future could lead to a substantial increase in the demand for labour.” "It would be unreasonable to expect more than a modest rate of expansion unless the country is willing to arrange for a large increase in its labour force by opening its gates wide for immigrant labour.”

The authors emphasise that it would be in the country’s interest to have an immigration policy which would ensure that an exportguided expansion of the economy is not impeded by a shortage of manpower. They imply that their conclusions hold true for the whole of Western Europe.

The nine member countries of the European Economic Community have a combined population of foreign “guest” workers and their dependants conservatively estimated at 13 million. Total unemployment within the E.E.C. is well over six million.

According to ar earlier study published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (0.E.C.D.), immigration restrictions increasingly imposed on foreign labour by the EJE.C. Governments are likely to increase, rather than decrease, unemployment. The reason is that the resulting labour shortages, confined to a few sectors of the economy, cause a

shortfall of output, and . therefore redundancies. West Germany has tried to reduce its immigrant population since early 1973, well before the oil crisis. Yet its present population of “guest” workers and their dependants is a record four million — despite the country’s four-year-old complete ban on recruiting and its various cash investment and incentive schemes designed to encourage the departure of foreigners. Another 1.4 million dependants of “guest” workers already in the country, who are entitled to residence rights, are still expected from abroad. In addition, the foreigners may well produce a million offspring within a decade. They were expected to stay strictly for the duration of their employment (the dirtiest and least remunerative) and they were widely scorned by the natives. Their reluctance to leave after the oil crisis, which ended a period of unprecedented economic growth in Western Europe, has

surprised the manpower planners of the E.E.C. They had failed to take into account the economic conditions of the “guest” workers’ native countries, in southern Europe, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean; with which those of Western Europe compare favourably even during a recession. The foreigners have thus become a large and permanent social entity comprising a culturally diverse, self-generating population. They cannot be expelled except through methods unacceptable to a community of European democracies. Yet their circumstances also conflict with the European ideal of liberal democracy because, apart from Britain’s Irish and Commonwealth immigrants, they all lack any political power. Their dependants, officially the natives of the countries of their birth, are statistically likely to inherit the inferior social and employment status of their parents, according to the recent O.E.C.D. studies. The E.E.C. Commission is

promoting some modest proposals for a gradual sharing of political rights with the resident foreigners, at least at local government level. The Commission also wants them to have an automatic right to bring in their fami* lies. But these proposals are doggedly resisted by many member Governments which have been on the defensive against the increasingly vocal, extreme Rightist political movements which seek the compulsory repatriation of foreigners. In a review of the 15 years to the end of 1975, the E.C.E. study says that the number of unfilled job vacancies in West Germany far exceeded the number of unemployed, suggesting that the labour force did not even approach the optimum level. The study also dismisses the notion that foreigners are less productive than native workers, and it argues that the presence of foreign labour might well have stimulated the substitution of capital for labour. — O.F.N.S. Copyright.