Looking for Labor

WESTERN EUROPE

Every Monday morning a Turkish Airlines plane lumbers to a stop at a Belgian military airfield near Charleroi, and out step 50 tanned and slightly bewildered Turks. Clutching yellow envelopes containing their X-ray pictures, they are welcomed with sweet Turk ish cigarettes, fruit juices, a round of speeches -- and the jobs they had been promised. Labor-short Belgium will roll out the red carpet for some 5,000 airlifted Turkish workers this year, and it is delighted to get them. They sharply illustrate the fact that booming Europe's labor shortage, which has been an enviable problem for some time, is be coming acute. Last week a report by the Common Market warned that the shortage is especially serious in West Germany, Luxembourg and The Netherlands, and is easing only slightly in Belgium and France.

Women to the Fore. While the prospering U.S. still has difficulty in bringing its unemployment rate below 5% , thousands of jobs go unmanned in such fast-growing European industries as construction, chemicals, steel and electrical equipment. West Germany has 681,000 vacant jobs for its 103,000 unemployed persons, many of whom are unemployable. Britain has 334,000 jobs going begging, The Netherlands 150,000, France at least 50,000, and Sweden 48,000. In some countries, workers in less critical spots are being shifted to hard-pressed industries; the Dutch recently discharged 6,000 soldiers from military duty to work on construction jobs.

Moonlighting has become common and profitable as a result of the shortage, and more European women are leaving their homes for offices and factories. Many employers wink at minor pilfering; it is cheaper to lose a few thousand dollars than experienced employees. To fight the squeeze, some big German manufacturers have even bought up smaller firms just to get additional skilled workers. Most European nations go beyond national boundaries to find the laborers they need--to such labor-surplus areas as Spain, Portugal, North Africa, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, and lately even the Far East.

Italy alone, despite its own industrial surge, has provided 1,500,000 workers for Germany, France and Switzerland. Some foreigners go job hunting on their own, but most of them are rounded up by teams of recruiters sent out by industrialists and governments. Belgian payrolls now count 300,000 foreign workers; Switzerland has 690,000 foreigners on the job, one for every three Swiss. France has an annual influx of 100,000, mostly Algerians. Last month Germany greeted its one-millionth guest worker since 1956: Armando Sa Rodrigues, a Portuguese carpenter who went to work for a Stuttgart builder after being presented with a motor bike to mark his arrival.

Bonus to Sign. Most of these prized migrants are unskilled and poorly educated, but they are courted and pampered like graduate engineers. As a rule they draw the same wages and fringe benefits as native employees, plus the travel expenses, low-cost housing and bonuses they were promised when they signed up. In Germany, which has the greatest need, factories and charitable organizations set up special canteens featuring workers' native dishes. Ford of Germany has spent $7,500,000 on housing for its 7,000 foreign workers, and Volkswagen built a small village with two community centers for its 4,500 Italians. The German national railroad has even bought prayer carpets for its many Moslem workers. It does not mind their turning to Mecca so long as they also turn out the work.

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