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2009-07-28 04:00:51
By Lesley Curwen
Presenter of Business Daily, BBC World Service Radio, in Schwedt
A metallic smell, and a jagged collection of thin towers and convoluted silver
pipe work mark out the PCK oil refinery.
It is a vast site which stretches for several kilometres near the eastern
German town of Schwedt.
White jets of steam fizz from the pipes. It is an impressive sight, a hymn to
industrial architecture built on the border with Poland.
Every year, 12 million tonnes of Russian crude oil are processed here, into
diesel, jet fuel and petrol - a tenth of the oil refined in Germany.
But this business also has a human story to tell, of the extraordinary jolting
change that happened in the eastern part of Germany after the Berlin Wall fell
in 1989.
'Its own world'
Twenty years ago, the then East German government owned PCK, which stands for
Petrolchemisches Kombinat Schwedt.
It was, in the words of the current chief executive Klaus Niemann, "a state
within a state".
Our aim is that our young people should stay in school here, find jobs and
not go to other regions
PCK worker Roswitha Floter
The workforce numbered 9,000. Their children went to kindergartens run by the
refinery.
There were 25 kitchens and canteens. The refinery owned a farm, and raised its
own pigs.
It had its own laboratories and a research facility with 800 researchers. A
lack of foreign exchange meant everything had to be made on site by engineering
workshops, even screws.
PCK was the centre of life in Schwedt. It even had its own newspaper, staffed
by six people.
One of them was Roswitha Floeter, who likes to brew up a pot of English tea in
her comfortable office. She is small, wiry, and after 35 years with PCK,
intensely loyal.
"I love this refinery," she confides, praising its "modern spirit" and high
standards.
But she remembers the time of greatest change, after the Berlin Wall fell in
November 1989. PCK was privatised in 1991; nowadays it is owned by several big
oil companies.
The bloated inefficiencies of the Soviet era were ironed out, with a series of
savage job cuts.
"Oh, it was a terrible time," she muses, "not good for the soul".
She was relieved to be told she would be kept on in a new public relations job.
Others were less lucky.
The numbers employed dropped like a stone, from 9,000 in 1989 to 1,200 today.
Dr Niemann estimates that of those who lost their jobs, one third managed to
find employment in the surrounding area, but two thirds decided to move to west
Germany.
Wages are about 10% lower in Schwedt than in the west, and unemployment rates
are still much higher, at somewhere between 20 and 25%.
In small villages, Dr Niemann says half the population may be living on state
benefits.
Staff shortages
Asked how well the refinery business is doing, Dr Niemann chuckles wryly. "It's
been better," he admits, but points out that three million inhabitants of
Berlin buy the refinery's petrol and diesel products, so business is "okay".
It seems this area of east Germany has not been as badly hit by recession as
parts of south-western Germany which produce exports, especially in the motor
industry.
The older generation of PCK workers, often Russian-speakers who trained in
Azerbaijan or Ukraine, will be coming up for retirement soon.
The worst problem, according to Mr Niemann, is that it's hard to attract young
engineers to such a rural area. And locals are still leaving for the bright
lights of big cities in the west and beyond.
At the Carl Friedrich Gauss secondary school in Schwedt, there's little
appetite for staying from a classful of students studying English.
A random sample of bright and bouncy 17 to 19-year-olds outline their plans
excitedly; they include emigration to the UK, and university courses in
computer science and Japanese.
Only one teenager wants to become a teacher and stay in Schwedt, to be with his
family.
Do any of them want to work at the refinery? No hands go up.
One boy says he does not want to be told what to do at PCK.
A girl explains that many of her family have been employees, including both her
parents and her grandmother.
"They tell me it's not good to work there," she says. "It's hard work and you
can't earn enough money."
Back at PCK, there are still traces of the Communist past to be seen.
There is a collection of Soviet-era art in the office buildings, and a
sculpture of a brawny muscled worker still stares out bravely beside a
blue-painted shed.
Veteran employee Ms Floeter worries about the future of Schwedt.
"Our aim is," she says "that our young people should stay in school here, find
jobs and not go to other regions."
She shakes her head and purses her lips. "We have so much to do."