You have too many housewives! Brussels sends memo to Germany, Austria and Holland ordering women to get jobs







The EU wants Europe's biggest economy to avoid looming labour shortages in future by dismantling barriers to women entering the workforce.

'Germany must better integrate women into the labour market," said the EU Commission, in a report on the German economy.

'Germany, but also Austria and the Netherlands, should look at the example of the northern countries,” said President José Manuel Barroso, in a reference to Scandinavia.

Back to work: Germany are encouraging mothers to head back to the office (posed picture)

'That means removing obstacles for women, older workers, foreigners and low-skilled job-seekers to get into the workforce. Excessive early retirement regulations need to be abolished.'



The Commission recommends that Germany take steps such as creating more child care places and reducing income tax for dual earners.

Taxing couples separately instead of as a pair could encourage more part-time, second-income earners to take up full-time work.

Operation Mama: Ministries prepared w white paper for German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressing the need for engineers and nurses

Just 2.2 percent of leadership positions at Germany's top 100 companies are held by women, according to a survey by the German Institute for Economic Research. But the conservative led coalition government of Chancellor Angela Merkel baulked earlier this year at legislation to even things up.

The EU's concerns about Germany come even though the country has embarked on a back-to-works scheme for women that the media has dubbed 'Operation Mama.'

To sustain both the economy and Germany's lavish welfare state, an action plan to call in mothers who have not worked before is on the table - along with plans to subsidise IVF treatment for childless couples.

Engineering, nursing, IT specialists, care-workers and semi-skilled workers are among those most needed according to a white paper prepared for Chancellor Merkel by eight ministries last month.

By turning inwards for help from its own population, Germany is effectively sending a signal to workers from eastern EU countries - allowed to work in Germany since 1 May this year after a German restrictions were lifted - that it would rather give jobs to Germans.

The paper states: 'Women and older workers represent a significant potential which could be quickly mobilised.

'An estimated 1.2 million professionals could be tempted back to the workplace if the options to combine child care and work were improved.'

'Operation Mama,' as it has become known, is aimed first at close to 500,000 mothers with children aged between six and 16. Studies show they are eager to become workers if some practical child-care programme were in place.

'These mothers are, for the most part, highly educated and motivated,' says the 27-page report.

Germany is also focusing on the elderly. BMW recently opened a factory in Bavaria tailored to the older employee, with special non-slip floors, better lighting, tools designed for hands that have lost their strength and so on. The raising of the statutory retirement age from 65 to 67 will boost the numbers of workers by a million by 2025. Only 56 per cent of over-55s currently work, and the goal is to increase that to 70 per cent.

In tandem with both schemes is a plan to reduce the number of students who drop out of their course, currently running at 7 per cent. The goal is to halve it, thus adding 300,000-plus professional-level workers to the job market.

Sums in the hundreds of millions of euros are being talked about in terms of subsidies for working mums to get them into the workplace.

'If companies need employees to work longer, they must do more to retain them and keep them productive on the job,' said Michael Stolpe from the Kiel Institute for World Economy.



