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Jobs: German unemployment falls in October

German unemployment ticked down in October as the country bounced back from the initial shock of the pandemic, official data showed Thursday, but a fresh round of shutdowns threaten to halt the momentum.

Published: 29 October 2020 12:47 CET
Jobs: German unemployment falls in October
Archive photo shows a sign outside of the Agentur für Arbeit in Hanover. Photo: DPA

The seasonally adjusted jobless rate slipped to 6.2 percent this month from 6.3 percent in September, according to the BA federal labour agency, which called it a “noticeable improvement”.

“Unemployment and underemployment fell sharply… However, the labour market is still showing clear signs of the first wave of the corona pandemic,” BA chairman Detlef Scheele said.

Pandemic-induced lockdowns in the spring shuttered businesses and factories, but sentiment improved as the economy opened up in the following months.

Government-backed short-time work schemes have softened the blow, saving hundreds of thousands of jobs.

READ ALSO: 'Signs of improvement': Here's the current outlook on jobs in Germany

The number of people in short-time work (Kurzarbeit) fell in October to 2.6 million from a peak in April of 5.95 million, the BA agency said, suggesting an upturn in business confidence.

Worsen the economic outlook

However, the improvement might be shortlived, after Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday announced tough new lockdown measures to curb the second wave of the virus.

READ ALSO: Germany to close bars and restaurants as Merkel announces new round of Covid-19 shutdowns

The restrictions – which include the closure of the gastronomy, leisure and cultural industries in November – will likely worsen the economic outlook for the rest of the year.

The government intends to offer financial support for companies affected by the lockdowns, but that may not be enough to save some of the millions of jobs at risk.

READ ALSO: Working in Germany: How is the pandemic affecting jobs?

The surge in new coronavirus cases “shows that we are still in the middle of the crisis – economically too,” said Fritzi Koehler-Geib, chief economist at German public investment bank KfW.

“As a result, unemployment is also expected to stagnate in the coming months or, if things go badly, increase significantly,” she added.

“The restrictions adopted will hit some sectors of the economy hard, but will protect the economy as a whole and most sectors economically”, said Marcel Fratzscher, president of the DIW research institute.

In concrete terms, the decline in the unemployment rate in October translates into around 35,000 fewer people registered as unemployed month-on-month.

But on a 12-month basis, around 556,000 more people were unemployed compared with the same point in the previous year.

Before the coronavirus struck, the German jobless rate had hovered at a record low of around five percent.

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Drug and harassment allegations plunge Bejart Ballet into turmoil

Switzerland's prestigious Bejart Ballet Lausanne company faces a probe as allegations of drug use, harassment and abuse of power raise the question why nothing apparently changed after an earlier investigation raised similar issues.

Published: 13 June 2021 12:07 CEST
Drug and harassment allegations plunge Bejart Ballet into turmoil
Bejart Ballet dancers perform at Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" in the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, on April 3, 2013. credit: YURI KADOBNOV / AFP

The company, founded by the late legendary French choreographer Maurice Bejart, was placed under audit on June 4 over allegations touching on its “working environment and inappropriate behaviour”.

The Maurice Bejart Foundation announced the audit just a week after revealing that the affiliated Rudra Bejart ballet school had fired its
director and stage manager and suspended all classes for a year due to “serious shortcomings” in management.

While the foundation has revealed few details of the allegations facing the two institutions, anonymous testimonies gathered by trade union
representatives and the media paint a bleak picture.

Swiss public broadcaster RTS reported that a number of unidentified former members of the Bejart Ballet Lausanne (BBL) company had written to the foundation, describing the “omnipresence of drugs, nepotism, as well as psychological and sexual harassment”.

Many of the accusations allegedly focus on Gil Roman, who took the helm of BBL when its founder died in 2007.

Roman did not respond to AFP requests to the foundation or BBL seeking comment.

‘Denigration, humiliation’

The French choreographer faced similar allegations during a secret audit a year later, but was permitted to stay on and continue as before, according to RTS and the union representing the dancers.

“We cannot understand what might have been in that audit that would have allowed them to clear him completely,” Anne Papilloud, head of the SSRS union that represents stage performers in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, told AFP.

“The accusations back then were word-for-word the same as today: harassment, denigration, humiliation, insults, temper tantrums, drugs,” she said, citing former company members who had contacted the union in recent weeks and had said they were around during the 2008 audit.

One dancer told RTS on condition of anonymity that it was common for Roman to publicly humiliate dancers who made a misstep, while another said he often asked dancers to bring him marijuana.

“Drugs were part of everyday life at Bejart Ballet,” the broadcaster reported her saying.

Papilloud meanwhile told AFP that the “vast majority of the testimonies I have heard have been about psychological harassment”.

Drug-use had been mentioned, mainly linked to how the drugs “provoked outbursts of anger”, she said.

She said she had also heard a small number of complaints about sexual harassment, although not involving Roman.

‘Terror’

But what stood out most in the dozens of accounts she had heard in recent weeks was the sheer “terror” people described.

Their reaction to what they had been through was “extremely strong”, she said, “almost at the level of post-traumatic stress”.

Papilloud said that as a union representative she had long been aware that BBL was considered a difficult place to work, with low pay compared to the industry standard and little respect for working hours.

But the recent revelations of “an extremely toxic working environment” had come as a shock, she said.

Over 30 current and former BBL members had contacted the union following the upheaval at the Rudra Bejart ballet school, she said.

The school, which halted classes and fired its long-time director Michel Gascard and stage manager Valerie Lacaze, his wife, was reportedly fraught with psychological abuse and tyrannical over-training.

One student described how she had found herself surrounded by teachers and other students who “humiliated and belittled” her, the president of the foundation’s board, Solange Peters, told RTS.

One teacher present at the time reportedly compared the scene to a “lynching”.

The revelations about the school appeared to have “opened a Pandora’s Box”, spurring alleged victims of similar abuse at BBL to come forward, according to Papilloud.

“We have really been inundated,” she said, adding that many hope that “this time, things can change”.

Following close communication with the foundation, the union too is hopeful that the current audit will be handled differently than the last one, with more openness and independence, Papilloud said.

“I think this will not be an audit where things are swept under the carpet.”

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