Heinz Werner

Europeanizing the labour market: Employee mobility and company recruiting methods

With the completion of the single European market steps are to be made towards eliminating remaining impediments to the free movement of labour between Community countries such as an inadequate flow of information or the non-recognition of educational or training qualifications. How do companies respond to the extension of national labour markets by a European component?

Is the EU's labour market threatened by a wave of immigration?

As the accession negotiations continue between the European Union and the Central and Eastern European Countries, Germany in particular fears that granting free movement of labour to these countries might generate a wave of new entrants that could overwhelm its labour market. The following article uses migration determinants and draws on previous experience of integrating countries into the EU in an attempt to reach conclusions about migration patterns that may result from the forthcoming eastward enlargement.

Free movement of labour in the single European market

Improving the mobility of labour is a major component of Project 92. What are the reasons for migration under conditions of freedom of movement and what are the repercussions for the labour market?

The employment of foreigners in Western European industrial countries

Not least due to the change in overall economic conditions, the employment of foreign workers in Western Europe has in recent years become increasingly controversial. The following two articles deal with different aspects of labour migration. Heinz Werner presents a survey of policies towards foreign workers and their families in the various countries of Western Europe and discusses possible future developments. Thomas Straubhaar examines the significance of northward migration for the economies of the Southern European countries of origin.

Some current topics of labour migration in Europe

The imposition of immigration bans ended an era of large-scale labour migration in Western Europe. Migration policy will have to centre on the consolidation and integration of the foreign population.

The integration of foreign employees in the labour market

For a number of European countries the presence of a more or less large number of foreign workers and their families is a fact to which they will have to adjust. As a rule, the longer the length of their stay, the less probable it becomes that these workers will return to their country of origin. In view of this fact it is necessary that the foreign workers and their families are integrated as comprehensively as possible, for humanitarian, social and economic reasons. The following article examines a number of indicators for integration so far in France, Germany (West), the Netherlands and Sweden.

World trade and structural adjustments

The developing countries have to be involved more closely in the international division of labour if they are to be able to play their part in a New International Economic Order. Increased competition in semifinished and finished products and internal substitution processes will pose new problems for the industrialized countries and force them to consider structural readjustments in their own economies.

Effects of the Southward extension on the EC—Labour market

The European Community will be enlarged in the next few years by the accession of Greece, Portugal and Spain. Which will be the consequences for the labour market of the EC and the Federal Republic of Germany in particular?

Employment problems in western Europe’s industrial states

Until the start of the seventies the situation on the labour markets of the European industrial states was considered with relative optimism. The high growth rates which most of the countries had achieved seemed to be sufficient to absorb the increases in the available labour force. The author discusses the changed situation and its consequences.

Aspects of labour planning

According to the latest census of April 1, 1971, India had a total population of about 547 million, of which 184 million were the potential labour force (i.e., all employed persons and all the unemployed, taken together). As the population growth is still accelerating, it is foreseen that the country’s population will reach about 695 million by 1981 which means that new jobs should be found every year for six million potential workers.