Army of Financial Inspectors
Seven thousand employees are in the new customs unit with the telling name Finanzkontrolle Schwarzarbeit (Financial Control of Illegal Employment). The headquarters of this still little-known organization is now located in Cologne, and the mission of the new financial inspectors includes not only checking market sectors that are especially tempting for illegal workers, but also coordinating the actions of all interested social institutions throughout Germany.
But 7,000 people (the size of a dwarf state's army!) is actually not such a significant number. Why? In the year that just ended, about 19% of all goods and services (in Germany, on average, 17%) produced in North Rhine-Westphalia came from the labor market's illegal sector. In other words, nearly every fifth North Rhine-Westphalian was doing undeclared work, so to speak, on the black – not reporting their side earnings to financial or social institutions and, accordingly, not paying taxes.
Undeclared Work on the Rhine
It should be said that North Rhine-Westphalia, with one of the highest levels of undeclared work in the country, has long worried the federal government. And now local lovers of illegal earnings (mostly employers who extract excess profits by not paying taxes) have now got what was coming to them: a technically equipped army of financial inspectors that plans monthly actions to restore labor order throughout the state.
The last major raid on illegal workers in North Rhine-Westphalia took place in the first ten days of October last year. During it, 8,100 taxi drivers were checked. The audit showed that of those checked, 724 drivers had not been registered by their employers for social insurance, and 673 were doing undeclared work while simultaneously receiving social assistance.
The "blackest" of all entrepreneurial sectors in North Rhine-Westphalia is the restaurant sector. During the latest inspection of catering enterprises, which took place at the end of 2003 and was dubbed "beer raid" by those penalized, financial inspectors checked 1,000 hotel enterprises and restaurants. Of the 3,000 employees engaged in this business, every second (!) turned out to be working illegally. As Werner Marquis, a representative of the North Rhine-Westphalian labor exchange, explained: "Undeclared work thrives precisely where personnel are not required to have special qualifications."
During the last labor inspection conducted by the predecessor of Finanz- kontrolle, BillBZ, 555 foreign citizens working without appropriate permission were identified. Among them were several Ukrainians with forged Dutch passports. Of those identified, 462 people managed, among other things, to receive several types of assistance from the social welfare office and charitable organizations.
Hunting Season Opens
It is important to note: with the launch of Finanz-kontrolle, the entire fight against illegal workers has for the first time been concentrated in one hand. This organization, which replaced its federal predecessor with the hard-to-pronounce name BillBZ (Customs Administration Unit for Combating Illegal Employment of the Population), will no longer share its powers with the labor exchange, as has been the case until now.
The consequences of such sole authority will not be long in making themselves felt, as they expect here, in the very near future. Economics Minister Hans Eichel expects that the North Rhine-Westphalian innovation will bring about 1 billion euros to the federal treasury as early as 2004. For comparison: in 2003, according to Mrs. Ines Graf, press attaché of Cologne's Finanzkontrolle, auditors managed to identify only 191.2 million euros in unpaid taxes and concealed social contributions.
And what, in connection with all these innovations, awaits those who earn extra money for the home, for the family? – that same one-in-five will ask. The answer to this question is: if you work illegally on a construction site, in a taxi, or in a catering establishment, it is high time you learned a new word – Finanzkontrolle. These are the areas that Schwarzarbeiter have long favored, and they will come under the close attention of the financial inspectors in the coming days.
And also: in mid-2004, changes to the body of social laws will apparently be introduced. In accordance with them, undeclared work will become not an offense punishable by a fine, but a crime for which one can easily end up in prison.
It's Not Prison That Frightens, It's the Sum
Of course, the reaction to these innovations from those whom they primarily concern is interesting. Everyone the correspondent of "Russkaya Germaniya" managed to talk to on this topic was asked several similar but quite comprehensive questions: what makes you do undeclared work? Have you heard the name Finanzkontrolle? Do you think it is possible to cope with illegal employment through administrative methods?
Before you are several fates of those whom people have dubbed "black-market workers". And several mini-interviews showing the difficulties that the fighters against illegal workers will have to face.
Troy Tuan Vank Khuang (28), a native of Vietnam, has been working illegally for more than three years in one of Cologne's Asian restaurants – for his own relative. This "black worker", in both the literal and figurative sense of the word (his duties include loading and unloading food delivered to the restaurant and cleaning the premises), is not particularly afraid of ending up in the local prison.
- Finanzkontrolle? No, I hear about this organization from you for the first time. I will not stop working the way I work in the future either. First, I still have to eat something. Second, I'm not afraid of ending up in a Westphalian prison: at home they are much worse. Third, I'll reveal a little secret I've used so far: for Europeans we all look alike, and our names mean little to them. When they check us, I just need to show my second cousin's work permit. No one can tell us apart from the photos. Can black work be done away with? Well, probably it could. It's just that, I think, no one will want to legally do what I do: digging around in peels, scraps and leftovers around the clock. And who stands to benefit from that fight?
Andrea P. (32 years old), a social assistance recipient, secretly, as she puts it, moonlighting as a "go-go girl" (a girl whose duty is to pull customers over to the food and drinks and thereby earn money for her establishment) in one of Cologne's clubs.
- Why do I do black work? The reason is simple: social assistance alone is not enough to feed and treat an eight-year-old child suffering from a musculoskeletal disorder. Do I see a chance for myself not to earn black money? In principle, I do: if someone agrees to pay for my "go-go girls" courses. What did you think? Even if I paid taxes, working without this piece of paper is legally impossible! And I, a single mother, simply don't have 1,450 extra euros. What are you saying?! 7,000 Finanzkontrolle employees have already started working right here in Cologne?! Well, that's it, now I'll surely end up in a box one day, like the one who emptied the Rhine treasury. As for whether black work can be defeated, that question is frankly not addressed to me.
Tatyana R. (28 years old), a resident of Dortmund, a student, a native of Ukraine:
- My "illegal side jobs" (when you write, be sure to put this expression in quotation marks!) amount to organizing various youth parties for money. It happens like this: my boyfriend finds clients over the Internet who need a cheerful female company, takes cash from them, and gives a certain part to the main worker — me. However, to be honest, it is mostly lonely wealthy men who are found this way, ready to pay cash to an attractive young lady for "cleaning". So more often I "clean" than party. Naturally, I pay no taxes. And I don't even know how that could be done in such cases. I hear about Finanzkontrolle for the first time. Am I afraid for the business? Yes, of course. I don't yet have German citizenship, which requires an unblemished biography, and so now I'll think about how to behave further. As for the crackdown on black workers, I don't believe in it, because I know: a huge number of all sorts of unaccounted odd jobs are offered precisely through the Internet, and it is practically impossible to track them all.
Well, only time will tell which of the interested parties will prove more accurate in their forecasts, plans and expectations. For our part, in citing the opinions of those working on the black, we wanted to say only one thing: the problem of illegal earnings does not tolerate simplifications and is far from being as unambiguous as it seems at first glance to a law-abiding citizen. After all, the creation of a new superstructure for combating black work raises concerns even among some independent experts.