More information on the issue can be found at the home page of the radical anti-racist group 'No one is illegal' at:
http://www.contrast.org/borders/noone.html
Johannes
Life in Germany Tough for Illegal Workers
By Konstanze Frischen
FRANKFURT. His eyes look tired, and the trials of the last months have etched themselves into his face, giving him the appearance of a man of 55, though Hassan Nazzal is in fact 10 years younger. He is homesick, he explains, and pining for the wife and five children he left behind in Beirut, whom he only saw once last year.
His life was mostly confined to the few square meters of floor space between a kebab spit and a counter. Except for that one two-week vacation, he worked from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day for six months in a Lebanese snack bar in Bad Homburg, a city just outside of Frankfurt.
Long hours of cleaning, cooking and serving, although he never received an employment contract: His under-the-table cash wage of DM2,500 ($1,160) monthly -- a handsome sum for a Lebanese -- eventually was not enough to keep him there.
"I just couldn't go on any longer," Mr. Nazzal says quietly. He quit last July.
His experiences are not uncommon. Peter Artzen, the head of the food and catering trade union, known by its German acronym NGG, says he has heard many such complaints from workers, accounts of 14-hour work days, inadequate pay and a lack of work contracts. Illicit work is booming in Germany, especially in the hospitality industry, where, according to NGG estimates, 20 percent of all "working relationships" are either illegal or "in a gray area." Ninety-five percent of those affected are foreign nationals, and while many have residence permits, their employers refuse to register them in order to save on the non-wage costs -- health, pension and unemployment insurance contributions -- which add substantially to the wage bill in Germany.
Arguably, it means lower prices for consumers, but it is also part of the underground economy which, according to the respected Ifo Institute for Economic Research, now accounts for 16 percent of output in Germany -- and shifts the tax burden on to law-abiding enterprises.
There are other risks as well: Last year, officials discovered an Asian cook suffering from tuberculosis during a raid on an industrial kitchen.
Not all catering workers are illegal immigrants, of course, since cooks from the Middle East and Asia often qualify for residence and work permits so that they can apply their special skills in restaurants serving ethnic food. But experts warn that the cooks' dependence on this limited sector often forces them into the "gray zone."
The NGG alleges that the conditions under which foreigners are sometimes forced to work in restaurants in Germany often border on, or cross the line into, criminality. "They are often gagged," says Mr. Artzen, who cites one case in which a man who ran a snack bar on Schweizer Platz in Frankfurt's Sachsenhausen district hired an acquaintance, a fellow Moroccan, to work as an assistant. "For the first two weeks, the man was locked in an apartment after he finished work," says Mr. Artzen, adding that the worst offenses usually involve employers and employees of the same ethnic group. "Those who have been here longer know how to handle their countrymen."
Sometimes it is simply a complete lack of concern for the employee. Mr. Artzen recalls a Korean cook who gave up everything to travel to Germany "on a one-way ticket," only for his employers to go bankrupt and abandon him without money or work in a country where he had no knowledge of the language.
According to the NGG, German managers of "haute cuisine restaurants" and other establishments are also not above imposing semi-legal conditions on their employees -- a practice which sometimes extends to German employees. One Frankfurt restaurant, the Aubergine, hit the headlines recently after it declared only part of "star chef" Thomas Voigt's actual pay in order to save on his non-wage costs.
But unlike most foreigners, Mr. Voigt felt quite comfortable taking his bosses to a labor tribunal.
Mr. Nazzal, the Lebanese cook, first realized the drawbacks of illegal employment when he developed an itchy rash but could find no doctor to treat him because he lacked health insurance. The NGG is now suing the snack bar owner (who is also Lebanese) for back payment of health insurance contributions, arguing that Mr. Nazzal worked there full-time for six months -- something the employer denies. Speaking through his lawyer, he claims that Mr. Nazzal was only employed for a two-day "trial period."
Mr. Nazzal shrugs his shoulders. He has now found a new -- legal -- job and has permission to stay in Germany until July. But he is already looking forward to returning permanently to Lebanon.
"I thought the work here would be very different," he explains.