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Tjark Merker, a trainee cutting machine operator, works on a lathe in the trainee workshop of the writing instrument manufacturer Montblanc.
© Marcus Brandt/dpa
It was already significantly better.
In 2012, the percentage of satisfied or very satisfied Hamburg trainees was almost 73 percent.
Meanwhile, far fewer are happy with their apprenticeship.
Hamburg - The satisfaction of Hamburg apprentices with their training is decreasing.
Two thirds of the trainees are still satisfied or even very satisfied, said the youth department head of the DGB North, Wiebke Oetken, on Monday at the presentation of the DGB training report 2024. But the numbers are declining.
“From a long-term and national perspective, we have achieved a relatively low value.” In 2012, the percentage of those who were satisfied or very satisfied was still at 72.8 percent.
The German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) surveyed a total of 1,053 trainees from 27 professions for the report from September 2022 to July 2023.
According to the training report, the satisfaction of trainees varies considerably between individual professions.
All prospective event technology specialists were very satisfied with their training.
For harbor boatmen and mechatronics engineers, the figures were 88.3 and 86.4 percent respectively.
In contrast, only 31.3 percent of future hotel management clerks were very satisfied with their training.
Together with the restaurant professionals, they also formed the largest group of those who were somewhat or even very dissatisfied, at 25 percent each.
There are many reasons for dissatisfaction in training.
14 percent of trainees stated that they always or often had to do things that were not related to their training - by three percentage points, the strongest increase since the studies began more than ten years ago.
Oetken included constantly making coffee, cleaning the workshop or doing non-technical things for the boss.
More than a third of the trainees also stated that they regularly had to work overtime.
Nine percent even stated that they received neither money nor any compensatory time off.
“This is a clear legal violation that the companies (...) are committing,” said Oetken.
The DGB is also critical of the fact that 45 percent of trainees, even in their third and final year of training, did not know whether they would be taken on by the company.
Especially given the shortage of skilled workers, “it is inexplicable to us why companies do not offer trainees a clear offer and a clear perspective.”
This also applies to the still widespread practice of only offering fixed-term employment contracts after training.
There is also room for improvement when it comes to preparing trainees for digitalization.
Only 42.1 percent felt they were in good or very good hands there and only 37 percent of trainees always or often received technical equipment such as laptops.
“28.6 percent said they never received the devices they needed, said Oetken.
Since a corresponding change in the law in 2020, it has also become much easier to complete part-time training.
Nevertheless, only 1.3 percent took advantage of this option.
In addition, only 28.7 percent knew about it, as Oetken said.
The number of training contracts signed rose to almost 12,000 last year.
Nevertheless, Hamburg has been showing a declining participation rate among companies in training for years and “will remain at the bottom of the West German federal states with a training company quota of 15.5 in 2021,” said Oetken.
To counteract this, Hamburg's DGB leader Tanja Chawla called for a pay-as-you-go future fund.
She demanded that employers need to provide more training again.
“And the state must create good framework conditions where the market fails.”
Support came from the Left Citizenship Group.
“A fund solution like the one the state of Bremen has already introduced would also provide positive impetus on the training market in Hamburg,” said its training expert Insa Tietjen.
In addition, as requested by the DGB, the minimum remuneration for training must be noticeably increased.
dpa