Seasonal workers
June 6, 2011
"I would like to do something to help my children financially. They should be able to achieve something in life," said Ioan Iacobin, as he cleaned tomato plants in the greenhouse.
The muscular 52-year-old is one of 95,000 Romanian seasonal workers in Germany. This year is the first time that Romanians make up the largest group of seasonal workers - last year it was still Poles.
Ioan Iacobin came to Bornheim near Bonn with his wife, four adult children and an infant. There, he works in the fields and greenhouses of organic farmer Leonard Palm.
Hard work behind the strawberries
"I'm here with my family, so I don't feel lonely," says Ioan Iacobin. "I am very happy that we are together here - and if we go back to Romania again, we'll stay together."
Although the father of 11 doesn't have his whole family with him in Bornheim, Iacobin's wife and eight-month old baby are waiting for him at the end of each day's hard work. His four adult children also work in the fields at Palm, picking strawberries and asparagus.
Together they live in five rooms of a container building behind the farmer's garage. The little house, built by Polish seasonal workers a few years ago, looks clean and friendly - it even has flowerboxes out front.
Last year, Poles made up two thirds of the seasonal workers in German agriculture. But this year, it's hardly worth it for Polish workers to toil in German fields for 6.40 euros ($9.50) per hour, when they are being courted to take jobs in higher paying fields.
Poles courted in many industries
On May 1, 2011, Germany finally opened its borders to people from the 8 eastern European countries that joined the European Union in 2004. Workers from Poland, as well as the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania can all look for jobs in Germany without any job restrictions.
Romania and Bulgaria, however, have only been EU members since 2007, and their citizens have to wait until at least 2013 before they'll have the same rights on the German labor market.
German farmers, meanwhile, have already transitioned from Polish to Romanian workers.
Farmer Palm says he gets along well with his new employees. But he's particularly fond of recalling a Polish seasonal worker from years past.
"We once had a primary school teacher, just as my children were starting school. She taught them some English and the numbers and of course one or two Polish words," Palm said.
She hadn't come to Germany to teach, but rather to pick asparagus. It was hardly an isolated case: in the 90s, a number of Polish academics worked on German fields because their salaries at home were barely enough to live on. Today, too, Ioan Iacobin earns more as a seasonal worker in Germany than a teacher or doctor in Romania - even though his salary is very low by German standards.
For Farmer Palm, working with the Romanian family has other advantages.
"The language barrier is much easier to bridge than with the Polish people," said Palm. "For the Polish workers, we sometimes had to learn a bit of Polish - like the numbers, but with the Romanians this is not the case."
Ioan Iacobin is from Banat - just like the Nobel Prize winning writer Herta Müller. There, Iacobin had many German-born neighbors and acquaintances, and he doesn't find it difficult to communicate in the foreign language. His adult children learned English at school.
The fields in 2013
Whether Romanian, German or English is spoken in the fields - the chemistry on the farm seems to be good.
"I like it here very much, because my bosses are nice people, they understand me and often work side by side with us on the field," said Ioan Iacobin.
As a Romanian, he'll likely be allowed to apply for other jobs in Germany in 2013 - and stay as long as he wants. At that point, German farmers will probably be hard pressed to find Romanian or Bulgarian seasonal workers - they'll have to start recruiting Ukrainians or Moldovans.
But Ioan Iacobin says he would always return to the Palm farm. That is, if the economic situation in his country doesn't improve soon - because more than anything, he'd love to just stay in Romania.
Author: Alexandra Scherle /smh
Editor: Michael Lawton