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trailer world Issue Two 2013

German haulage companies contract unemployed profes-sional drivers from Southern Europe: both sides benefit from this exchange of professionals.

As Southern Europe is in crisis, many professional drivers there are without work. For German logistics firms, this is a chance to find new professionals and with it, a solution to the lack of suitable personnel in Germany. In their home country of Spain, they liter- ally were out on the street without a job - today, luckily, this is different for Jorge Lupion Maldonado, Manuel Lopez Este- vez and Miguel Ruiz Isidro. Last winter, they packed their bags and emigrated to Germany. The skilled drivers now work for the Barth-Logistikgruppe in Baden- Württemberg. And manager Berthold Barth is satisfied all round with his new Spanish employees. Lately, in the region it had become very dif- ficult for him to find suitable personnel for the requirements of a professional driver. And he has to fill about ten vacancies every year, as employees retire. Maldonado, Estevez and Isidro joined him through an initiative of the Straßenver- kehrs-Genossenschaft Württemberg (SVG) (professional road association). The SVG has initiated a project last year in cooperation with various partners such as KRAVAG-Ver- sicherung Hamburg, to place Spanish pro- fessional drivers with German haulage companies. “We have started the project in Spain, as here the potential of trained driv- ers is very high and many of them are now looking for a new job”, explained Uwe Nest- el, chief executive of the SVG Württemberg. While in one part of Europe profession- als are on the streets, here the haulage com- panies are urgently looking for good per- sonnel. Now it is again becoming difficult to fill the vacancies. In the future, this prob- lem will increase, thanks to the demograph- ic changes. Therefore, it is also necessary to look for new employees in other countries - and, as the project of the SVG Stuttgart shows, with success. However, if you as a company want to employ foreign personnel, you have to be prepared to specifically han- dle their integration. According to numbers made available by the Deutschen Speditions- und Logistikver- bands (DSLV) (German haulage and logis- tics association), about a third of the German New country, new language, new employer Source: Calculations of the OECD office, based on data of the Federal Statistical Office. 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 GreeceItaly Spain Portugal January to June 2012 July to December 2012 July to December 2010 January to June 2011 July to December 2011 Migration from selected EU countries into Germany Industry 16      Issue Two 2013

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