COs OR CHEAP LABOR?
Heneghan, Tom
FROM WEST GERMANY COs or CHEAP LABOR? Under a new draft law that went into effect on August 1, young West German men seeking conscientious objector status will no longer be questioned...
...Without a steady and even intensified supply of COs, several organizations admitted, this muchneeded care would be almost impossible...
...Iven, who became director in 1970, has changed the government's outlook on conscientious objectors from, as Stern magazine put it, "deterrence" to "integration...
...He will then be required to do 18 months of some socially useful service rather than IS months in Bonn's army, the Bundeswehr...
...Gaining recognition as a CO also became easier in recent years, so that now almost half of all applicants are granted CO status...
...Three-quarters of them work in the seven largest private charity organizations, the rest in small groups or on individual assignments that range from tutoring to ecological work...
...The prospective CO must now only state in writing—"a postcard will do...
...Given these facts, the government felt it could do away with the controversial "conscience tests" which used to serve the almost impossible task of determining the strength of an applicant's moral convictions...
...COs came to form the backbone of numerous organizations offering labor-intensive social services such as care for the elderly and the crippled...
...At least partially responsible for this change is Hans Iven, the director of the Federal Office for Alternative Service...
...COs carry the bulk of the workload in over 230 youth hostels and have become indispensable to many labor-intensive services such as "Meals on Wheels" and other programs to care for the elderly, the crippled, and the homeless...
...As the number of conscientious objectors rose in the 1970s, increasing numbers of private charities grew more and more dependent on this source of cheap labor to do their "dirty work...
...one opposition leader snorted—that he rejects military service and would like to register for alternative service...
...All this has naturally changed the image of the con...
...Under a new draft law that went into effect on August 1, young West German men seeking conscientious objector status will no longer be questioned about their beliefs...
...Whereas the old alternative service regulations made almost army-like demands on the COs, Iven introduced looser rules, allowed COs working in their home towns to live at home, and broadened the list of services COs were allowed to perform...
...The debate on the draft law, which dragged on since last summer, revealed two opposing views on military service in West Germany...
...Commonweal: 5 The Social Democratic/Liberal coalition government calmly replied that West Germany's delayed postwar "baby boom" will make it statistically impossible for the Bundeswehr to take in all available recruits for many years to come...
...The debate over the new draft law also threw light on an interesting development in West German society...
...There are now about 16,000 recognized COs in West Germany...
...Even after a generous number of COs are subtracted, the pool of possible recruits will still be far in excess of the Bundeswehr's annual requirements...
...Instead of a hoard of "loafers," as the opposition likes to portray them, West Germany's COs are actually more like an army of low-paid social servants...
...The Christian Democratic opposition argued that the new law would in effect abolish the constitutionally established principle of universal male conscription and make life far too easy for the "loafers...
...Both the German Red Cross and the Catholic "Caritas" organization have about 2,000 alternative servers on their staffs...
...Recruitment would fall to dangerously low levels and those who did sign up, opposition leader Helmut Kohl feared, would be considered "dummies...
...In most states, almost all ambulance personnel are now COs, and COs also make up about 20 percent of the orderlies and assistants in many hospitals and clinics...
Vol. 105 • January 1978 • No. 1
