New Health Minister Jens Spahn (Christian Democratic Union CDU) aims to alleviate the drastic shortage of caregivers in Germany by increasing the import of workers from European Union countries, reports the daily Rheinische Post as German media reported on Sunday.
“Germany is already lacking over 17,000 workers in the field of elderly care. Therefore, we will intensively recruit, alongside attempts to reactivate domestic forces, we will also actively seek caregivers from the European neighborhood. The European Union has a rule of free movement of labor,” Spahn told Rheinische Post.
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He also announced the expedited recognition of diplomas and professional certificates from abroad.
We should not ‘pick up’ caregivers from other countries that are already lacking them.
“Sometimes it takes months and years before the diplomas of doctors and caregivers who are already here and who can start working are recognized,” Spahn said, announcing that this problem will be resolved quickly in cooperation with the federal states responsible for diploma recognition.
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) politician and health expert Karl Lauterbach criticized Spahn for wanting to weaken EU partners with his policy.
“We should not ‘pick up’ caregivers from other countries that are already lacking them,” Lauterbach told his coalition partner Spahn.
After the criticism on Twitter, Spahn explained that the increased import of caregivers from other EU countries is just one of the mechanisms in the process of addressing the drastic shortage of caregivers in Germany.
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One of the important elements, as stated in the Christian Democratic-Social Democratic coalition agreement, is also programs that would make the profession of caregiver more attractive, among other things, by increasing salaries.
The daily Passauer Neue Presse reports that the main problem of lower pay is the fact that many caregivers work on fixed-term contracts through agencies that pay below the agreed tariff contract.
Regularly and full-time employed caregivers earn around 3,000 euros gross per month, while those employed through agencies earn about five hundred euros less per month.
According to the latest statistics from 2015, there are about 300,000 foreign caregivers working in Germany, with the majority coming from Poland, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kazakhstan.
