Fancy working for €1 an hour?

Berlin architects don't come cheap, except in Germany, where they can now be had for the price of a newspaper. Like Clementine Roux, an architect and construction engineer who earns €1.53 an hour, reports Derek Scally from Berlin

"It's not the career start I imagined, but I wanted to gather work experience," says the 30-year-old mother of two. Having been unemployed for nearly two years, she now works 60 hours a month in the office of a park in the Berlin district of Neukölln-Britz. The money she earns is in addition to other payments she receives: €800 a month in social welfare and full rent allowance.

Roux is just one of thousands of participants in a revolution the German government hopes will revive a stagnant job market. It's one part of looming employment-market reforms that have been the only topic of conversation in Germany in recent months.

From January dole payments, currently up to 67 per cent of final salary, will slowly sink to the level of social-welfare payments: about €345 a month in western states and €331 in the east for a single childless person. To cushion the blow the government has created "€1 jobs", which will allow people to work for between €1 and €2 an hour for 35 hours a week to top up their social-welfare payments.

The idea isn't altogether new, as such jobs already exist locally. The difference is the scale: about 100,000 jobs will have been created around the country by January, at a cost of €140 million to the Arbeitsamt, the state employment office. Officials say it will be value for money if it helps the unemployed back to work. Currently, they can refuse €1-job offers. From January refusal will be met with a cut in social welfare.

The mainly positive reception to the programme has surprised conservative critics who complain that Germany's generous welfare system has bred a work-shy generation. The project isn't supposed to start until January, but already city and state authorities have begun placing applicants. The interest in the jobs is highest in unemployment black spots in eastern states, where the jobless rate is often more than 20 per cent, twice the average, and where regular jobs simply do not exist.

In one town applicants have already been put to work repairing and recycling bicycles from the city pound, which are then distributed to needy people.

In the city of Kiel jobbers clean up the streets after festivals and flea markets. In the central state of Thuringia people have even been put to work on archaeological digs. Each federal state has between 10,000 and 15,000 positions; most report no shortage of applicants.

"Nobody wants to do a job like this for long, but many find it better than sitting around at home," says Volker Lenke of the Arbeistsamt's northern department.

One of the most innovative schemes is in Berlin, where the city's 2,000 unemployed teachers are being invited to teach German part time to schoolchildren.

It's a badly needed service in the capital, where two out of three children, mostly those of Turkish background, have poor German on their first day of school. Until now tight school budgets prevented the problem being addressed.

"For young teachers it's a great way to grow into the job, and I know so many unemployed young teachers," says parent Susanne Forster outside one Berlin primary school. "This way the unemployed teachers and the children are helped."

But not all Berlin's long-term unemployed have been pleased with the new regime. Aydan Yalcin, a 27-year-old single mother of four, says that, after being put to work in kindergartens and retirement homes, the scheme has left her worse off.

"The €40 I earned went on my monthly social-welfare train ticket to get to work, but then that was abolished, and now I have to pay on top of the €40. And then there's the kindergarten costs," she says. "I have been trying to find work for nearly two years. I don't find this very motivating."

Economic analysts disagree about the merits of the scheme. Some have been calling for such a programme for years; others are less enthusiastic. "This will not increase at all the chances of integration for the unemployed in the jobs market," Holger Schäfer of the German Economic Institute told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper. "It will just drive down the price of low-paid work."

That's the argument of Germany's powerful unions, who have spiced up the debate with talk of "exploitation" and even "state-subsidised slave labour" like in the Nazi era. They warn of an employment-market meltdown in the new year, when retirement homes and other facilities replace their expensive care staff with €1 jobbers.

State officials say strict rules are in place to ensure the €1 jobs serve the public interest and do not hinder the creation of full-time jobs. How well they will function will become clear only in the new year.

Rolf Schallnass, a 50-year-old bricklayer, rejects the unions' exploitation claims. He's been unemployed for two years and says he is relieved to be doing anything - even gathering autumn leaves. "It's good that it's non-profit work we're doing," he says. "That way you know who you're doing it for, and you don't feel exploited."