"In Germany conciliation is not only with words"

Marta del Rosario Moreno from Madrid will welcome 21 new infant teachers from Spain on June 3 who will join the ranks of the Kita (short for Kindertagesstäte, which could be translated as ‘nursery’) of the city Frankfurt next school year. On site, she will voluntarily host them, teaching them the basics of what they may need in the city. It’s not the first time she’s done it. She likes to help break the ice for those like her who come back to Germany in search of a better quality of working life. She did it in November 2017, and since then she has continued to reaffirm her decision. She is now 29 years old, a three-year-old son, Liam, a divorce behind her back and few intentions of returning to that Spain that at a decisive moment in her life offered her few job opportunities.

“I studied Early Childhood Education and shortly after finishing I graduated as a primary school teacher. I opposed, I did not have enough score. I took the DECA –Ecclesiastical Declaration of Academic Competence– to teach religion in private schools, and the C1 of English. Until a friend told me about going to work in Germany, where there was and continues to be a shortage of teachers,” she says from a park in Frankfurt, where she has stopped to attend La Vanguardia, while her son Liam asks who is hogging the spotlight. from his mom. “I have my doubts about whether she could do this – she says, referring to spending quality time with her son – being in Spain, divorced as I am now. I think everything would be more complicated. Here conciliation is not just by word of mouth”.

She was seduced in the first instance by a friend from her career who put her in contact with Helmeca, a company dedicated to integrating educators into the German labor market. “At first I didn’t have all of them because we had to pay 3,500 euros and study German for six months, six hours a day from Monday to Friday. But it was a course subsidized by the EU for the mobility of workers in Europe and I ended up paying 800”. He ended up with a not insignificant level of German, a salary of just over 2,000 euros with reduced hours and a comfortable life and “without cutting myself financially for anything” in the financial capital of Germany.

That of Luís Martín is a clear example of the paths that dual training can open up –studies that combine part in an educational center and part in a company–, although these end up opening up outside of Spain. Is yours a case of brain drain? Perhaps yes, although a good part of his predilection for the German country was already marked from the cradle: his mother is German and his bilingualism, a great advantage when looking for opportunities outside of Spain.

This 22-year-old computer scientist studied a dual degree in Germany that combined Computer Science and ADE. The same company where he did the internship, at a rate of 1,200 euros per month from the first day, later offered him to stay. He did it, he expanded his work experience and now he has just been hired by a Greek company to fill a position as software programmer in its German division, a position for which in Spain, and with his work experience -2.5 years- he They would pay about 28,500 euros a year, and for which in Germany they receive twice as much, although they know that over time they could earn up to 7,000 euros a month.

“There are many pros to working in Germany. The salary is one. But there are also cons. It is a country that really likes bureaucracy and if you are not German, society can seem a bit closed to you and you feel unwelcome ”, she comments. In addition, the language barrier, in his opinion, also influences: “On a day-to-day basis you can function with English, but a good base of German is recommended for work.” His profile is also in high demand in a sector, that of programming, which seeks to expand in Spain. “I receive about four or five offers weekly from recruiters who are looking for people with my profile; The fact of knowing German and Spanish is on the rise, ”he explains from his parents’ house in Sitges, where he is visiting these days.

In addition to being a computer programmer, Luís Martín is also a digital nomad. He was born in Sitges, studied at the Deutsche Schule Barcelona and at the age of 18 he went to Germany to study. He then went to live in Estonia, a computer paradise where everything except getting married and divorced can be done online. “I love exploring new cultures, it’s in my DNA,” he says. But the climate is, without a doubt, what he misses the most from this busy nomadic life that he leads.

“They are very strict with the working hours. If it is your time, you go home and if you do overtime, you are compensated with vacation hours or paid. I have 30 days of vacation and my salary ranges between 65,000 and 70,000 euros a year”. These are, broadly speaking, the advantages that Pati Cavestany from Barcelona lists over the reasons why she has stayed to work in Germany. That and the fact of feeling “valued”, as well as “well paid”.

This young 24-year-old engineer had been clear for some time that “having work experiences abroad would enrich me a lot”. But what she perhaps never seriously considered was working outside of Spain for an indefinite period of time. Forever? Time will tell. “Right now I see a long future in Germany. There is nothing that ties me to Spain, although we live very well there. I do want to return in the future, and if there were equal pay, I would return sooner”. But the reality is what it is, and Pati Cavestany receives in Germany more than double what she would earn in Spain (between 28,000 and 34,000 euros compared to the 65,000-70,000 that she charges now). Yes, it is true that she pays more taxes, but she shares a flat with three other girls in the same situation and the possibilities of saving are quite great.

In addition to the salary, forging a professional career in the nerve center of European industry is not trivial either. “I am very well surrounded, I have the entire automotive sector, factories, production plants… If I want to change jobs, it will cost me much less,” he analyzes.

Cavestany studied Industrial Engineering at the UPC in Barcelona and through the international European Unitech program, in which universities and companies from the engineering sector participate to give mobility to students with high academic performance. This is how she began to build a curriculum also made up of languages ​​such as French, English and German. She went through Lausanne and Lyon, and did an internship in Munich. And she wanted to keep it. “I loved the environment, the working conditions, the city. It was a great opportunity.” And she felt valued, because without any experience, the company opted for her. And there it goes.