Germany weaponized foreigner status to depress wages and split the labor market

Evidence

Their work contracts provided pay and conditions inferior to those of German workers. Special police sections were established to deal with workers leaving for better-paid jobs, through forcible return of workers to their employers, imprisonment, or deportation. The status of foreigner was used to keep wages low and to create a split labor market. Foreign labor played a major role in Germany’s rise to the status of a major power in the lead up to World War I, with Italian, Belgian, and Dutch workers alongside the Poles. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3854

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: German reunification delivered a vast low-cost labor pool to employers — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 125