> The situation might be the reverse in a few years.

Which is the problem with all-powerful unions. Works great when you have a booming industrial city like Detroit. But accelerates a downturn in bad times or decelerates potential boom times, negatively affecting the wider economy outside of the union.

In downturns those lucky enough to have a union job cling on to them and continue to push for more power, creating a secondary class system within the working class benefiting a portion of the populace while simultaneously making their company far less competitive (far more relevant today in our global economy), makes industry far less flexible to change, significantly disincentivizes hiring new workers, etc.

It's like Keynesian policy but with QE on all the time regardless of cyclical changes. Or how price controls on food markets have caused food shortages in almost every country in history who has attempted it (including notably in Venezuela repeatedly in the past decade). It's always done with good intentions and typically works well initially but it's rarely designed to be dynamic and flexible enough to reflect changing realities or appreciate the changes the union itself is having on the company/industry which far too often ultimately harm the union workers themselves rather than helps.

Unions in Europe doesn't work as in the US. There isn't anything like a union job. Everyone can become a member of the union and the tariff is negotiated centrally between unions and employer organisations. Germany have had formal unions since 1850 and strong unions for 100 years.

The same story can be told about the Scandinavian countries. Decades of unions strong enough to force employer organisations to establish central frameworks for wages, working conditions across entire sectors of the economy.

But German unions are actually quite rational agents who have agreed in the past to not press for raises or increased benefits because it affects their companies' competitiveness.

Funny nobody ever asks how rational employers are, in squeezing the wages of their consumers.

German unions always start with big first offers. This is just anchoring. Then they settle for less. Last year they also asked for 5 or 6%, we got 2%. In an industry with more than 10% year-on-year growth for the last 5 years that's paltry, especially because there were no raises during the downturn.

The problem with unions isn't the raises. It's rather that it makes people lazy. You need to hire more people not because there's more to do, but because most people are very comfortable in not getting fired. They just wait for retirement.

Immigration would help :)

It's not like Germany doesn't have immigration... There's the whole pool of the EU who can pretty much immediately start working in Germany. Immigration for skilled workers in Germany with employment prospect is far easier than for a lot of other countries (certainly easier than e.g. into the US). There's also a significant influx into the work pool from refugees and asylum seekers, although that should certainly happen more smoothly and with more support.

Fortunately there are quite a lot of people in the UK who are wondering which country they’ll be living in around 14 months from now.

Companies I consult are looking all over Europe and have employer branding efforts running in the whole of the EU.

..and they still require fluent spoken German!

This drives me crazy. I could fill a lot of open positions right now. Oops, your candidate does't speak German.

I really really don't understand.

Sorry, that people who speak their own language in their own country bother you so much.

That's just not true in many companies nowadays. E.g. in the automotive industry (which is 1/7 of the german economy) I have a growing number of colleagues who don't speak a word of German.

Well "growing numbers" vs. reall acceptance is quite a long way.

Possibly in Berlin, where is more alien friendly, to be able to get any job in English, in south, especiall south Bayern is quite difficult, even in IT ( which I really don't understant). Might be if all customers are in Germany, then there will be a gap somewhere, which someone has to fill and they don't really want or can.

In bigger companies ( like automotive, or even Siemens ), they do have customers and organisation from all over the world and English is the primary documentation and also common language.

I only wanted to say, that given a perfect candidate for a position, it might be rejected because it doesn't speak German.

Many startup companies in Berlin are English speaking as their daily operations.

The point is if the majority of people are native German speakers you take a major productivity hit moving to English, say 10% which increases your costs and demand for people.

Where are you looking? In Berlin startups often have english-speaking engineering teams.