The visit of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and a ministerial delegation to Berlin in December was marked by mutual praise and a deepening of the partnership. But one issue caused unease: Germany’s efforts to recruit Brazilian nurses.
At that time, Brazilian Labor Minister Luiz Marinho expressed his dissatisfaction with the way Germany was trying to recruit Brazilian skilled workers at a meeting with his German counterpart Hubertus Heil. Germany was not adhering to the procedures that had been agreed upon, said Marinho.
He was referring to a declaration of intent signed by Marinho and Heil in Brasília in June 2023 on cooperation between the two countries on the migration of skilled workers. At that time, Heil and Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock were in Brazil to attract Brazilian nursing staff to Germany in view of the shortage of skilled workers in Germany.
The Brazilian Ministry of Labor had assumed that the German government would suspend previous initiatives to recruit Brazilian nurses until the new collaboration was established. However, recruitment continued and was only stopped at the end of 2023 under pressure from the Brazilian government.
The Brazilian Federation of Nurses, which represents 15 regional unions, had also called for an end to the previous recruitment initiative, which was launched under the previous government.
In June 2022, when Jair Bolsonaro was still president, the Federal Employment Agency (BA) signed an agreement with the Brazilian Nursing Association Cofen to promote the recruitment of Brazilian nurses. It is precisely this agreement that is at the center of the controversy, as both the current Brazilian government of President Lula da Silva and the Brazilian Federal Association of Nurses question the legitimacy of Cofen in signing a migration agreement with the BA. Maíra Lacerda, head of the International Affairs Office of the Brazilian Ministry of Labor, told DW that Cofen was not competent to sign such an agreement.
The president of the German Nurses’ Association, Solange Caetano, told DW that the agreement had not been good for Brazilian nurses. She criticized the lack of help in adapting to a foreign country and the fact that Brazilian nurses had to wait up to three years for their diplomas to be recognized after arriving in Germany. “If nurses want to emigrate abroad of their own accord, that’s fine as long as they have good conditions. But we don’t encourage them to do so and we don’t think they should be encouraged to do so,” she said.
For its part, Cofen explained that it signed the agreement with the BA after being designated as the responsible body by the Ministries of Health and Labor of the then Bolsonaro government. According to Cofen, the agreement with the BA was beneficial for Brazilian nurses because it established rights for these professionals and made it easier for those who wanted to gain international experience to go abroad.
“It was an opportunity for nurses who wanted to live in another country – with the certainty of good pay and the chance to develop personally and professionally,” Cofen’s legislative adviser Alberto Cabral told DW.
The BA told DW that it regrets the suspension of the placement agreement for nursing professionals in Brazil. “From the BA’s point of view, the placement agreement in its current form offers a reliable framework for regulated, fair and ethically acceptable labor migration that complies with international standards.” Talks about a new collaboration are to be continued in the second half of 2024.
Coven representative Cabral reiterated the nursing association’s previous statement that there is a surplus of skilled workers in Brazil, which he believes justifies the agreement with Germany. According to Coven, unemployment in Brazilian nursing is at 10 percent.
The Brazilian Federation of Nurses, on the other hand, rejected the argument that there is unemployment in nursing. Rather, there is a poor distribution of skilled workers, which is concentrated in the big cities, while there is a shortage of staff in remote areas. The Labor Ministry in Brasilia also told DW that there is no surplus of nurses in the country. However, there is no reliable and current data on unemployment in this sector. The most recent figures cited by Cofen come from a 2015 survey.
The controversy also seems to be rooted in the government’s attitude towards brain drain. Maíra Lacerda of the Ministry of Labor pointed out that nursing training in Brazil is “long and solid”, with five years of study and another two years of practical work, and criticized the fact that skilled workers “in which the Brazilian government has invested” are being poached without any return.
At the end of April, Lula criticized the recruitment of Brazilian engineers by the American company Boeing. “It is not honest to steal our engineers without spending a cent on their training,” said the president.
The Federal Employment Agency stressed that it does not want to cause brain drain effects in its partner countries and respects the concerns of the Brazilian government. “Recruitment by the BA was therefore immediately stopped.”
The German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs told DW that the implementation of the declaration of intent with Brazil is a high priority. “It is important to promote an exchange from which both countries – as well as the employees – benefit and through which skilled immigration from Brazil is consolidated and deepened.”
Author: Bruno Lupion
The original of this article “German nursing recruitment causes trouble in Brazil” comes from Deutsche Welle.