Ruminations of an American gastarbeiter: the big picture, part 1 of 3

Dear reader, a bit of perspective… I was a college student 50 years ago when I penned these words. I have left the text largely intact to preserve the integrity of the piece, but by today’s standards it suffers from pronouncements, stereotypes, and style. Please be forgiving. — LDW

I recently returned from three months in Germany working and living with gastarbeiters, the foreign laborers of Germany. [This narrative was originally written in 1972] The following article is the first of a three-part series about my experiences as well as the larger issues. This article, part 1, focuses on the bigger picture.

In the summer of 1972 visitors to the Munich Hauptbahnhof, or central train station, saw relatively few of the blond-haired, blue-eyed northern Europeans they might have expected. Instead, they were treated to a vastly more interesting array of colors, cultures, and languages from all over the world.

These are not the Olympic champions we have seen on television. Some of these men are, however, the workers who labored to build Olympic Village. Many more, sometimes along with their wives and children, keep Germany’s factories producing the immense array of consumer and industrial items necessary to the booming economy.

These are the gastarbeiters, misleadingly translated as, “guest workers.” Germany, however, is not interested in playing the gracious host. Like the lettuce farmer in California and Farah [clothing factory] worker in New Mexico, Germany is interested primarily in immigration and exploitation for profit.

gastarbeiters come from all over the world

Alien workers in Germany presently number in the millions. They come primarily from Southern Europe and Turkey. Many, however, come from every corner of the world including such diverse countries as Tanzania and
Guatemala. But no matter where they are from, they have all come for the same reason: to sell their labor in exchange for the Deutschmark.

Germany is experiencing a period of phenomenal industrial growth.
Modern Germany, however, lacks one essential ingredient which would allow it to fully capitalize on its trade and production capabilities: labor.

Large German companies, such as Ford, Volkswagen, and Opel send recruiters in search of laborers to Turkey and various Southern European nations. There is considerable incentive for the foreign workers to leave their home countries. The average Southern European may make the equivalent of roughly US $130 per month, and often less. A Turkish laborer probably averages less than half that each month.

In Germany these same workers take home roughly between US $250 and US $400 each month. In addition gastarbeiters are eligible for yearly tax refunds worth approximately 20% to 30% of their net earnings, in effect
increasing their monthly earnings by roughly US $50 to US $120.

the men in the village are gone — they are all gastarbeiters in Germany

Generally the gastarbeiter is young, single, and male. Often, if he is married, his family will remain in the home country. Yugoslavian gastarbeiters claim
that in Yugoslavia there are entire villages consisting of only women, children, and old men. All the working-age men live and work in Germany, sending home Deutschmarks to support their families.

This year [1972] there are over 550,000 Yugoslavian laborers in Germany. These laborers contribute vast quantities of hard currency to Yugoslavia’s economy. Tito and Willy Brandt are forced to meet more or less routinely to discuss this situation with all its social, economic, and political ramifications.

Marx predicted that Germany would be one of the first countries to experience a revolution by the proletariat. He was wrong. Traditionally Germany has had very weak labor unions and a correspondingly moderate to strong fascist dominance over labor.

This is nowhere more apparent in German labor history than it is today. Normally, organized labor can make tremendous gains in periods of acute labor shortage. In contemporary Germany, however, the acute shortage of labor has been used by the government to undermine whatever power the
unions might have been able to accrue. Government policy allowing the massive importation of foreign labor has resulted in the weakening of German labor unions in recent years.

gastarbeiters and the housing shortage

In addition the massive influx of gastarbeiters has aggravated Germany’s chronic housing shortage. Many larger companies have been forced to construct workers’ barracks in order to insure their labor force a place to live within a reasonable distance from the factory. Sometimes the workers’ “Wohnheim” is constructed and maintained by the city. Nevertheless, often the gastarbeiter is forced to seek his own room or apartment. Many times this means staying with friends or relatives, or living in expensive or inconvenient places for months before a suitable living arrangement is found.

The importation of gastarbeiters is a natural consequence of Germany’s
accelerated industrial growth. But this fact alone does not endear gastarbeiters to the German silent majority. The next article in this series will describe the quality of life as experienced by this “stranger in a strange land.”

Source: University of New Mexico. “New Mexico Daily Lobo, Volume 076, No 26, 10/2/1972.” 76, 26 (1972). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/daily_lobo_1972/106 [this series was originally published as: “Memoirs of an American gastarbeiter.”]

The Medium.com version of part 1 has been edited for length and clarity.