Print version Recommend this page Press release
20/ 2004
Bonn, 08.06.2004
The new industrial metal-working occupations are coming - On August 1, 2004!
The overhaul was long overdue! In response to the new demands being placed on the skills and qualifications of skilled workers in the industrial metal-working field, updated training regulations that lay down the vocational training requirements for the five industrial metal-working occupations:
- Plant mechanic
- Industrial mechanic
- Construction mechanic
- Machine tool mechanic and
- Milling-machine operator
will go into effect on August 1, 2004. Germany's Federal Institute for Vocational Training ("BIBB") and the GESAMTmetall and IG Metall industrial trade unions held a special conference on the revised training profiles for industrial metal-working occupations in Bad Godesberg on June 8 and 9, 2004. This conference offered firms, vocational schools and other players an opportunity to inform themselves about the key points of the new training requirements and a chance to discuss initial concepts for their implementation with the experts who were involved in revising the regulations (details on the conference programme can be accessed in German on the Internet at www.bibb.de/de/1427.htm).
Developed by experts from labour and management under BIBB's aegis, the new training regulations will replace provisions that were adopted in 1987 and will apply to the largest occupational group receiving vocational training in Germany today - approximately 100,000 trainees. These training regulations will make it possible to deploy skilled workers on a flexible basis within their respective company and open the door to occupational mobility between occupations, companies, segments and branches in the metal-working industry.
An increasingly broad range of highly diverse products and services, the use of increasingly diverse technologies, ever-changing forms of organization and new sales markets are the hallmarks of the ongoing change that enterprises in this sector are subject to today. These continuous processes call for flexible workforces that can quickly adapt to new conditions and respond to the needs of a wide variety of customers. This requires workers with broad technical knowledge, a high level of flexibility, the ability to work as a member of a team, motivation to pursue continuing training, quality consciousness, international skills and a well-developed focus on customer needs!
The newly revised regulations satisfy these requirements with broadly formulated curricula and by gearing training to the actual company work process, including areas located upstream and downstream from the process.
The introduction of the 3,5 year course of training means that:
- The previous 18 fields of specialization in these five occupations will be eliminated;
- Common skills for all industrial metal-working occupations (core qualifications) will be taught during a 21-month period (half of the period covered by the training);
- This phase will be linked with instruction on skills that are specific to the particular occupation (the other half of the training period);
- Occupational profiles will be geared to company work and business processes and new skill requirements (such as planning and scheduling responsibility, quality management, customer orientedness, use of technical English terminology in communications, etc.);
- Vocational training will be geared to the primary operational areas of the company providing the training;
- Vocational school instruction will focus on concrete occupational tasks and processes;
- Training will be concluded with an "extended" final assessment comprising a two-part examination. Part II of the examination may now for the first time revolve around an operational order or tasks that have been developed on an inter-company basis.
Once the new training regulations for industrial metal-working occupations go into effect on August 1, 2004, it will be possible to receive training under the new regulations starting in the autumn of this year.
The following options will however also be available:
- Until December 31, 2004 new training agreements may be based on the old regulations when this is expressly agreed upon by the trainee and the firm providing the training;
- Existing training agreements may be converted to the new provisions when the individual trainee has not yet taken the interim exam as of the date on which the conversion takes effect.
