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The Corona Crisis and the systemic relevance of jobs in Germany: Towards a new
appreciation and solidarity?
Christian Schramm & Paul-Fiete Kramer
6th of April 2020, most German borders are closed. COVID-19 has shut down almost the
entire globe. In Germany, as in other countries, economic activities are reduced to an
absolute minimum. But today, after pressure from the farmers’ association and even calls
from the nationalist and anti-immigrant party AfD, the interior minister announces that
temporary agricultural workers will be flown in from Eastern European countries to ensure
the harvesting of fruits and vegetables of the season. The German and Austrian governments
call for “Humanitarian Corridors” that should make possible the travelling of urgently
needed domestic care workers for the elderly, the most vulnerable group in European
societies at the current time [1].
This text is mainly about the possible change of what we refer to as systemically relevant
(systemrelevant) jobs before and during this current crisis and the recognition we give to the
people who carry them out. The way we treat different societal groups reflects what is
valuable for us in ‘normal’ times and what becomes valuable during times of crisis. As many
of the people in these recently called systemically important jobs (like agricultural work or
care work) are migrants and refugees, this article is also a call for solidarity with the
countries and regions where they come from. Our response to COVID-19 has to consider the
diverse relationships they maintain and the different local and national contexts they are
embedded in.
What is meant by ‘systemic relevance’ in Germany?
The term ‘systemic relevance’ became popular in Germany only once so far. As figure 1
shows it reached its peak of usage between 2010 and 2014. This peak s linked to the global
economic and financial crisis starting in 2008 when the term was mainly used in the context
of offering state support to banks which were ‘too big to fail’.
Fig. 1: The issue of ‘systemic relevance’ in public reporting in Germany
Source: Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, keyword: ‘systemrelevant’ [2]
Back then it was banks and other financial service providers whose existence was
interpreted as systemically relevant and led to rescue packages worth billions of Euros,
which were financed with taxpayers' money [3]. Figure 2 shows the co-occurences – words
that are closely related – of the term systemrelevant in the German news corpus crawled by
the University of Leipzig in 2018. It confirms the very tight relationship between ‘systemically
relevant’ and the financial services industry.
Fig. 2: Relationship between ‘systemically relevant’ and finance/banking in the German news
corpus
Source: Wortschatz Universität Leipzig [4]
In short, the industries and professions that seemed to be most relevant to the system were
those that provided companies with capital. A look at the current discussions around the
keyword ‘systemic relevance’ shows a completely different focus. A google search [5] for the
term systemrelevant on 7th of April 2020 limited on Germany showed 254 results of which
133, more than half, are linked to explicit discussions about the systemic relevance of
different profession groups such as workers in agriculture, carers, physicians, shop
assistants, but also hairdressers, musicians or social workers (professional football also calls
itself ‘systemically relevant’).
So, since March 2020 we are no longer talking about investment banks as actors that are
relevant for a ‘functioning’ financial market, but more often about ‘normal’ jobs. It is about
professions that are of central importance for the everyday life of the majority of the
population, who satisfy basic needs and necessities of life like healthcare and food.
However, these occupations are all too often located on the margins of the labour market –
irrespective of their important social function. Here we focus on these ‘new’ systemically
relevant jobs in agriculture, the service sector and the health sector, particularly on the
seasonal workers, harvest workers, grocery clerks, delivery services employees and carers,
that are at the centre of the present debate. They all work in professions and carry out
activities that are often poorly paid and have been of little prestige in the public eye – with
the possible exception of the nursing professions for elderly people, which were considered
urgently necessary and important even before the Corona crisis, but whose pay cheques at
the end of the month often tell a different story. The current debate on systemically
important professions thus reveals a fundamental contradiction between the human work
that is absolutely necessary for society, and its gratification (both in the form of appropriate
remuneration and in terms of social recognition resp. prestige) [6].
In sum, at this moment, the term ‘systemic relevance’ does not refer to one anonymous
industry anymore. It relates, more than before, to the people who are doing different kinds
of work and therefore indirectly to their biographies and life courses that are organised
around it [7], to their identities as professionals and finally to the social order itself with
professions being one of the main determinants for social status [8].
‘Systemic relevant’ Jobs in times of Coronavirus: Who carries them out and under which
circumstances?
The research on labour market and migration in Germany shows that foreigners and persons
with a migration background are over-represented in these new systemically relevant jobs.
They tend to be located in the lower sectors of the labour market where non-standard forms
of employment are frequent and the ‘home office’ privilege is not an option [9]. One reason
is the devaluation of qualifications during migration, discrimination by ethnicity, phenotype
or religion is another reason why someone becomes a shop assistant instead of an office
employee [10]. Domestic care and agriculture sectors are heavily dependent on foreign
labour and seriously threatened by the current restrictions on international movement. Only
in the domestic care sectors there are between 300.000 and 500.000 mainly Eastern
European women employed in unsecure working situations. Almost 90% don´t have a work
contract. The seasonal agricultural labour force also consists mainly of the 300.000 Eastern
Europeans coming each year to Germany [11]. Not to forget the population with refugee
background that entered the labour market faster than expected. While women work mainly
in the health and education sectors, a big share of the men do their jobs in the production
and logistics/transport sectors [12]. But also, in the higher segments of, for example the
health sector, migrants and refugees play a vital role. About 50.000 doctors with a foreign
nationality (12,5% of the overall number of doctors) keep the German health system running
during this crisis situation [13].
The above-mentioned lack of gratification in the ‘new’ systemically important occupations is
already apparent when looking at the average pay in the respective areas of activity. Nursing
staff in health, child and elderly care who worked full time earned a gross monthly salary of
between € 2596 and € 3415 at the end of 2018 (depending on their area of work and their
qualifications; not considering many carers in informal employment relations with often
even lower salary). The earnings of employees in supermarkets, who currently stock the
empty shelves with new goods under a high risk of infection due to the close contact to a lot
of customers, are considerably lower. Here, the gross income for workers in food retailing is
€ 1857. The income of harvest workers and seasonal workers in agriculture is also low (€
1949 per month) [14]. This means that the monthly earnings of those who work in the
occupational fields that have recently been designated as systemically relevant are in some
cases even significantly lower than the average monthly gross earnings of full-time
employees in Germany as a whole (€ 3880) [15]. A study by the German Institute for
Economic Research (DIW Berlin) comes to a similar conclusion, which also points out that
the vast majority of occupations defined as systemically relevant have below-average pay. It
also emphasizes that not only is there a monetary gratification crisis, but also a lack of social
recognition of the respective human work despite its importance (the people in sales
professions in the food industry, who are currently often called ‘everyday heroes’, receive
the least recognition) [16].
The importance of human labour is also highlighted in the ongoing debate on the future of
work in the context of digitisation. Contrary to gloomy predictions about the future of
human work [17] Dengler and Matthes (2018) point out, for Germany, that only a (small)
part of human labour will be replaced by digital technologies, robotics and AI, especially in
the social and the health sector [18]. According the IAB-Data this share is lowest among
carers (approx. 14-20% of the activity could be supported or taken over by new
technologies), while agricultural activities are most likely to be replaced by machines (60%).
By way of comparison: the profession of bank clerks (previously identified as a systemically
relevant job in banking and finance sector) is potentially, almost completely, replaceable by
digital technologies, with gross earnings of € 4785 per month [19]. So especially jobs in
elderly care or other social services will continue to be performed by people (this might also
be the case for agricultural jobs, as costs for implementing digital technologies might be
higher than the wage for people doing these jobs). The appreciation of these jobs and the
people who are doing them seems all the more important, keeping their future importance
in mind.
The future of systemically relevant jobs: Towards a new appreciation and more solidarity,
or just a ‘Weiter so’ [20]?
So, what to learn from the Corona crisis regarding appreciation of systemically relevant jobs
and solidarity with people who carry them out?
Firstly, we not only have to properly financially reward the jobs that now, in a crisis situation,
suddenly appear to be vital to us. We have to give them, and the people who carry them
out, the social recognition (prestige) that they deserve – now and in the future. Taking this
seriously implies also to pay greater attention to their working conditions. The miserable
working and employment conditions in the individual professions have been criticized
before. Trade union projects such as that of Faire Mobilität have been revealing the
precarious working and employment conditions of migrants working in the food industry or
doing care work. Collective bargaining agreements for care workers have been partially
enforced, or at least have made it on the political agenda in order to counteract the
imbalance between important, and often emotionally and physically stressful human work,
and its gratification. Much seems to be moving in the right direction, and the expressions of
solidarity during the pandemic show that the previously unappreciated activities are
appreciated after all. So, ‘weiter so’ (to speak for the German case) resp. 'business as usual'?
The answer clearly is no. The experiences of the financial crisis have shown that a brief flare-
up of a broad discussion about the systemic relevance of professions and industries and their
regulation has only partially materialized. Today, investment banks are acting just as
recklessly as before the financial crisis, and stricter regulations to avoid such crisis situations
as a decade ago still seem a long way off (keyword ‘financial transaction tax’). To make sure
that after ‘talk’ comes ‘action’ trade unions, migrant organizations and all related actors
should be as involved in moving forward as employers and politicians.
Secondly, in this renewal process an emphasis has to be put on the transnational
entanglements that we find within many of the fields of work, and on the varied and multi-
local forms of economic, cultural, social and political participation that different groups in
our societies are practising. The daily life references of many of the people in systemically
relevant jobs develop transnationally, connecting families, communities and specific
locations with each other. They position themselves, and are positioned by others in the
societies of origin and arrival and in the transnational social spaces they help create [21].
This means that it does not make much sense to try to protect workers only when they
arrive on the German fields to harvest asparagus, if they were crowded, thousands of them
waiting to board in the Romanian Cluj-Napoca airport [22]. It should make us think about
what it means for a domestic care worker in charge of a specifically vulnerable elderly
person and their possibilities to meet family members back home, any time soon. It implies
also to consider the effects of the migration of thousands of qualified health workers to
western European countries each year for the chronically poorly equipped healthcare
systems of countries of origin such as Romania or Serbia, that could collapse under the
pressure of COVID-19 patients [23]. And how do the ones that have tried to return to their
families, when the virus started to spread in arrival countries, deal with the rejection of their
co-nationals and the accusations of having “brought back” the virus? [24] It is clear that we
cannot hide within our national borders. Peoples’ lives and the consequences of their action
are not contained by them. The same counts for our solidarity with the more vulnerable,
inside and beyond the European borders.
Finally, coming back to the events from the 6th of April. While asparagus is a luxury good that
motivates us to go to great lengths to be able to eat it, we are not so perseverant in
protecting the ones who collect it for us. Even worse, we don’t fulfil our obligations to
protect the most vulnerable, defined by international refugee law, and who knows what
dangerous precedent we are setting right now. Up to the same day, the 6th of April 2020, not
one refugee child has been saved from overcrowded refugee camps on the Greek islands. A
humanitarian catastrophe began to unfold a while back and now it becomes terribly urgent
to attend to. Even though the resettlement of a mere symbolical number of 1500 of minors
had been agreed among several European states already in February, no action was
undertaken.
The discussion about systemically relevant jobs and (international) solidarity should make us
rethink the way in which we appreciate people and their work in our own national societies,
but also how we want to live a real cross-border solidarity that recognises transnational
connections of living and working together. That means that we have to accept the
transnational contexts we live in, and conceptualise and practice solidarity not only for ‘us’.
It also means to question the structures and mechanisms within, and between capitalist
societies that lead to the mentioned inequalities and imbalances regarding ‘systemically
relevant’ jobs, people and their appreciation. The current Corona crisis should be seen as a
starting point for a different approach to tackle these challenges. We as a society have to
‘walk the talk‘ regarding systemic relevance and solidarity.
References / Notes
[1] https://noe.orf.at/stories/3039628/ [07.04.2020]
[2] https://www.dwds.de/r/plot?view=3&corpus=public&norm=class&smooth=spline&genr
es=0&grand=1&slice=1&prune=0&window=3&wbase=0&logavg=0&logscale=0&xrange=
1996%3A2019&q1=systemrelevant [07.04.2020]
[3] https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/chronologiefinanzmarktkrise106.html
[09.04.2020]
[4] https://corpora.uni-leipzig.de/de/res?corpusId=deu_newscrawl-
public_2018&word=systemrelevant [09.04.2020]
[5] The Google search was done as a deactivated personal web search.
[6] Koebe, J. et al. (2020): Systemrelevant und dennoch kaum anerkannt: Das Lohn- und
Prestigeniveau unverzichtbarer Berufe in Zeiten von Corona. In: DIW aktuell, Nr. 28 –
24.03.2020.
[7] Kohli, M. (1985): Die Institutionalisierung des Lebenslaufs. In: KZfSS, 37, pp. 1-29.
[8] Beck, U.; Brater, M. & Daheim, H. (1980): Soziologie der Arbeit und Berufe: Grundlagen,
Problemfelder, Forschungsergebnisse. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.
[9] Körner, T. et al. (2016): Arbeitsmarkt und Migration in der amtlichen Statistik. Überblick
über Konzepte, Statistiken und ausgewählte Ergebnisse. In: WISTA, Sonderheft
Arbeitsmarkt und Migration. Statistisches Bundesamt.
[10] Koopmans, R. et al. (2018): Ethnische Hierarchien in der Bewerberauswahl: Ein
Feldexperiment zu den Ursachen von Arbeitsmarktdiskriminierung. Discussion Paper SP
VI 2018-104. Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung.
[11] https://mediendienst-integration.de/migration/corona-pandemie.html [09.04.2020]
[12] Brücker, H.; Kosyakova, Y. & Schuß, E. (2020): Fünf Jahre seit der Fluchtmigration 2015:
Integration in Arbeitsmarkt und Bildungssystem macht weitere Fortschritte. IAB-
Kurzbericht, 04/2020.
[13] https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateien/5_Publikationen/Ge
sundheit/Broschueren/BMG_DdGW_2019_bf.pdf [09.04.2020]
[14] Evaluation based on IAB-Data (https://job-futuromat.iab.de/) for different jobs
(Altenpfleger/in; Gesundheits- und Kinderkrankenpfleger/in, Gesundheits- und
Krankenpflegehelfer/in; Helfer/in im Verkauf; Helfer/in in der Landwirtschaft;
Bankkaufmann/-frau) [08.04.2020]
[15] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/237674/umfrage/durchschnittlicher-
bruttomonatsverdienst-eines-arbeitnehmers-in-deutschland/ [09.04.2020]
[16] See [6]
[17] Frey, C. B. & Osborne, M. A. (2013): The Future of Employment. How Susceptible are
Jobs to Computerisation? In: Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 114, pp. 254-
280.
[18] Dengler, K. & Matthes, B. (2018): Substituierbarkeitspotenziale von Berufen. Wenige
Berufsbilder halten mit der Digitalisierung Schritt. IAB-Kurzbericht 04/2018.
[19] See [14]
[20] In latest time the term ‘Weiter so’ was used a lot in Germany (mainly by politicians) to
describe and to criticize a (political) practice that just ‘carries on as if nothing had
happened’ and by this more or less ignores moments of crisis and its unsolved societal
challenges linked to it.
[21] Pries, L. (2010): Transnationalisierung. Theorie und Empirie grenzüberschreitender
Vergesellschaftung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.
[22] https://www.libertatea.ro/stiri/in-plina-pandemie-12-avioane-pline-cu-muncitori-
romani-decoleaza-astazi-de-pe-aeroportul-din-cluj-napoca-cu-destinatia-germania-
2947465?fbclid=IwAR3y073ZiEgzgUTUc-qSlg-63KcgzABmuhstF5sNlQTrHcJxHYYflkwQZ6s
[11.04.2020]
[23] For Romania see: https://www.euronews.com/2020/03/30/covid-19-and-romania-s-
healthcare-brain-drain-could-be-perfect-storm [11.04.2020]
For Serbia see: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/billiglohnland-serbien-marodes-
gesundheitssystem.795.de.html?dram:article_id=473944 [11.04.2020]
[24] https://www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/sie-sind-zuhause-nicht-willkommen
[11.04.2020]
Authors
Christian Schramm & Paul-Fiete Kramer
Researchers at the Chair of Sociology / Organization, Migration, Participation
Faculty of Social Science, Ruhr-University Bochum
Universitätsstr. 150, 44801 Bochum
https://www.sowi.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/sozomm/schramm.html.en
christian.schramm@rub.de
https://www.sowi.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/sozomm/kramer.html.en
paul-fiete.kramer@rub.de