"When an economy has been destroyed, it takes many years to rebuild." "The bailout may be ending, but the problems that drove people away aren't." "The Germans have welcomed us. They want highly skilled people." Vasilis Kapoglou, founder, Greek Engineers of North Rhine-Westphalia club
"Engineers are connected to the development of a country." "But there is no development happening in Greece." Martha Ouzounidou, chemical engineer from Thessaloniki, Dusseldorf
A protester in Athens against Greece’s bailout deal with the IMF and EU.
Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images
When the educated, the professionals, the ambitious see no avenue for themselves to advance into the future with workplace challenges and salaries to match, they have a penchant for leaving a country in which they remain unemployed or underemployed. It is they, after all, who are advantaged, enabled to pack their technological expertise since it is portable, the skills useful anywhere. The less advantaged, the unskilled and the dependent ones remain where they are and hope for an upturn in their nation's fortunes.
And in the case of Greece, which had too long lived beyond its means, where people found methods to avoid paying taxes yet demanded social programs, national bankruptcy was avoided only when the International Monetary Fund and the European Union stepped in to take charge and impose on the proud country a need to impose economic constraints and to restrain public expectations that social services could continue despite the mountainous debt, a veritable brain drain developed.
Close to a half-million Greeks decided they could advance their prospects for the future by becoming economic migrants. "When you realize that your country has become a cemetery of dreams, you need to find dreams elsewhere", explained Constantine Kakoyiannis who plies his trade as an engineer not in Greece, but in Dusseldorf because Germany welcomed him with open arms, to take advantage of his experience and work ethic.
Doctors, technicians, architects and both skilled professionals in all occupations, along with recent graduates have left their country of birth for more stable, wealthier northern Europe locations. Even though Athens will be exiting its eight-year reliance on international financial bailouts, repaying its debts, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras declaring a recovery, the exodus continues with no signs of abatement.
Loyalty and trust appear to have evaporated in favour of personal gain.
Little wonder, when one of every five Greeks of employable age remains unemployed inside an economy that fails to match the one that prevailed a more ten years ago. In North Rhine-Westphalia including Dusseldorf and Cologne, the economy is booming and about 130,000 Greeks have installed themselves to work in German tech, tele-communications and construction companies.
Ironically enough it was Germany that insisted austerity in Greece be enforced as it demanded cuts to pensions, salaries and the public sector before it would agree to make available about $380 billion of bailouts for the reduction of the Greek debt. Angela Merkel is viewed as the architect of this debilitating and devilish diminishing of Greek fortunes.
Another irony; a diminished and financially unstable Greece has been assailed by the entrance of tens of thousands of economic migrants from North Africa, imposing their needs on the still-fragile economy of a recovering Greece. A Greek tragedy. Much of which is attributable to the willingness of Frau Merkel to accommodate the presence of the hordes of mostly young men seeking their own economic advantage in Germany.
"We can't find enough humans. We're trying to replace people with machines wherever we can [to remain productive]." "We'll still need people. But robots are more reliable." Zbynek Frolik, CEO Linet, Prague Czech Republic
"A labour shortage will continue for years." "We must be prepared to find more human employees, or find a way to substitute for them." Bohdan Dovhanic, business director, Schneider Electric, Prague
"It's becoming [inability to expand for lack of workers] a brake on growth." "If businesses don't increase robotization and artificial intelligence, they'll disappear." Jaroslav Hanak, president, Czech Confederation of Industry "Unless business leaders, politicians and trade unions react well in advance and responsibly to the upcoming industrial revolution, even more jobs may be under threat [resulting from lack of available human labour]." Josef Stredula, president, Czech-Moravian Confederation of Trade Unions
At
Linet, most welding, cutting, painting and molding functions were
automated a decade ago. Thirty industrial robots do the work of up to
200 people. But that doesn’t offset the need for humans. CreditMilan Bures for The New York Times
Although China is dedicated to its vision of a world monopoly on manufacturing consumer items to control global trade as well as natural resources, and apply its intelligence to conquering new frontiers in technology, it is, it seems, not the only country capable of applying itself to taking a greater share of the commerce that keeps the world humming along. There are nations in eastern Europe, once part of the Soviet bloc, whose manufacturing capabilities were constrained by the ideology of Communism, who now focus on excellence in manufacturing techniques to challenge China's superiority in producing cheap, inexpensive consumer products.
At Linet, manufacturers of state-of-the-art hospital beds which over 100 countries import for their hospitals, the discovery that new employees, badly needed to enable them to produce and expand the company, are nowhere to be found. Their factories in central Bohemia advertise for new employees right across the Czech Republic, but even though raising wages to tempt new workers were tried, as well as offers to subsidize worker housing, there were few responses.
Now, at the Linet manufacturing plants there are 30 industrial robots hard at work, performing work normally done by up to two hundred human employees. Still, the company is on the lookout for humans to program machines and perform custom work whose complex nature cannot yet be undertaken by robotic help.
The
labor shortage has been so stark in the Czech Republic that even the
trams in Prague have run less frequently this year for want of drivers. CreditMilan Bures for The New York Times
The Czech Republic and its neighbours recognize the imperative to adopt robots to confront their labour shortages. And as well for the obvious purpose of increasing manufacturing flexibility and output. Although inviting foreign workers to enter would represent another solution to the problem to acquire human labour where it is needed, the government has pledged that it will limit immigration in response to the general rejection in eastern Europe of the flow of migrant labour from Africa and the Middle East.
Natural population growth in Europe as in all Western countries is low, and the realization is that more people are dying than are being replaced by new births to stabilize national population levels. Which succeeds in ensuring high employment but fails to produce sufficient workers to satisfy the needs of employers. Robots are recognized as a solution in eastern Europe for worker shortages. Businesses in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland are aware of the imperative to remain agile to compete.
They became low-cost manufacturing hubs for Europe when the USSR fell, and have since then averaged a production growth of five percent in more recent years, helped along by the global recovery from the broad-based 2008 recession. Companies experiment now in replacement of factory workers and truck drivers with artificial intelligence. Workers, though well employed, fear the rise of automation as heralding a potential mass job displacement.
In eastern Europe, however, the lowest jobless rate in the European Union, comes in at 2.4 percent; it would be the envy of workers in North America. Between 2010 and 2015, new robot installations rose 40 percent in the Czech Republic, the result being that at present, roughly101 robots are at work for every 10,000 workers, and more on the way as companies gear toward improving productivity. In Germany, there are 300 robots per 10,000 workers, the greatest such ratio in all of Europe.
Buyers
crowded around “smart” machines that tested car headlights or
interacted with humans in shared work spaces at the Amper trade fair, in
the Czech city of Brno. CreditMilan Bures for The New York Times
At Elko Co., producing industrial timers for companies such as General Electric, 70 percent of production is fully automated, with the company planning to be close to full robotization in a few years' time. Factory floor workers were moved by Jiri Konecny, the company's chief executive, to perform more complex roles, while hundreds of other employees were to focus on research and development. "If we didn't invest early in automation, we'd be dead by now", he stated.
The Czech Republic can boast that it was they who coined the word robot, derived from "rabota", the Slavonic term describing arduous work. The word itself appeared for the first time in a Czech play dating from 1920 focusing on machines created to perform repetitive factory tasks. In the play, the robots do their work competently, then manage over time to take over; a nightmare scenario repeated in many science fiction works, since then. "You won't switch off the robots and bring back people", warns Michal Pechoucek, head of the Artificial Intelligence Center at the Czech Technical University in Prague.
Linet is one of the world’s biggest
hospital bed makers, with 900 employees making 500 beds a day. Its
devices monitor and collect data on patient health, and can cost as much
as a BMW.CreditMilan Bures for The New York Time
"He yelled at me and asked why a woman was doing the work. I was mortified." "I always think it's clearly an idea thought up by men [pink toilets with floral patterns to make women feel more at home in a industrial environment]." "I think the government should simply pursue things that would make it easier for both women and men to work." "I used to dream about going back to the field [engineering]. But now, I leave it up to the younger generation [of women]." Maho Nishioka, 46, diversity promotion office, human resources, Shimizu Corporation, Tokyo
"There are still plenty of men who don't want to take orders from women." Junko Komorita, chief executive, Zm'ken, contractor, southwestern Japan "You can make the work seem glamorous, but many women end up quitting when they see it for what it is." Natsuko Fukuyoshi, 32, plasterer, Tokyo
"There's definitely this image of construction being a macho industry." "But I heard that more women were joining, and I always dreamed to be one of them." Yuho Nakamura, 25, structural work supervisor, Shimizu, Tokyo
Japan Wants More Women in Construction Industry
Back when Maho Nishioka, having gained her engineering degree, showed up at her new job at a construction site where she was meant to supervise work at the site, the workers refused to talk to her, let alone obey her professional instructions. An angry client once insisted she stop inspecting a bridge, despite that she was the sole engineer on site qualified to do so.
In Japan, female workers are underemployed and underpaid. Unsurprisingly, that male bastion of employment, the construction industry has distinguished itself by being the unfriendliest toward women attempting to enter the field. Twenty years after Ms. Nishioka's first day on the job, the construction industry has embarked on a marketing campaign to convince Japanese women that construction work might be beneficial to their plans for satisfying employment.
The industry is in a steep decline, experiencing its most serious labour shortage in years. Now, both government and industry have set out to convince women that construction work is calling out to them; the goal, to double the number of women in construction. Long hours and relatively low wages, however, hamper the drive. Which has led government to create a website to convince young women how interesting various positions in construction might be for them.
The website links to a cartoon showing a woman wearing a pink, heart-patterned uniform, holding a pink, heart-shaped welding mask. Ridiculous it may seem, even to prospective industry workers, but then the Japanese are inordinately fond of cutesy cartoons. Female workers have been provided with portable toilets and dressing rooms; you guessed it -- coloured pink and elaborated with floral patterns.
The country's public outreach includes awarding public works projects to certain companies employing women, hiring consultants to hold seminars for construction executives, and taking surveys of female workers. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe calls the women-in-the-workplace efforts, "Womenomics", encouraging companies to promote diversity and promote female managers. One might think he had taken lessons from Canada's Justin Trudeau!
Over three-quarters of working-age women are now in the Japanese labour force. Four years into the drive to double female construction engineers and skilled laborers to 200,000 by 2019, the rise has been disappointing, since women represent only 3 percent of the workforce in the industry. Despite labour shortages, construction workers earn 25 percent less than their peers working in other industries, and women in construction earn 30 percent less than their male counterparts.
Ms. Nakamura, 25, hopes to someday oversee an entire building site as a supervisor. Of the 300 workers at the construction site in Tokyo where she works, however, she is most often the only
woman to be seen around.
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
