JOB CENTRES around Germany are hiring security guards, sending staff on self-defence courses and installing alarm systems ahead of benefit cuts being introduced on January 1 that constitute the most radical overhaul of the country’s generous welfare system since the second world war.

Konrad Freiberg, head of the police union, has warned of attacks on staff. There have already been several bomb threats against job centres and assaults on staff by irate jobseekers faced with benefit cuts. Pressure groups are planning a campaign of sit-ins next month to protest against measures they say will plunge thousands into poverty.

The reforms are the latest stage in Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s programme to revitalise the ailing German economy, which has grown only half as fast as Britain’s over the past decade and failed to generate work for 4.3m unemployed.

The cutbacks will hit especially hard in Gelsenkirchen, a former coal-mining town of 270,000 in the Ruhr region, where the jobless rate at 18% is the highest in western Germany. Locals claim the reforms will only add to their misery.

“Recently I’ve been seeing old women rummaging in dustbins for half-eaten sausages,” said Peter Schrimpf, 59, an unemployed engineer who tops up his benefit by selling chocolate Santas in the town centre. “People don’t have any money to spend and the reforms will make it worse. That’s why this place looks the way it does.”

Marcel Wehnl, 24, who is also out of work, said the last time he was offered a job was three years ago. “The job market is dead and Gelsenkirchen is dying,” he said.

The local job centre is not taking any chances. It has hired security guards in recent months and trained staff in “aggression management”. “It’s not martial arts, but it involves learning how to calm people down,” said Elisabeth Baumgart, a job placement worker. “I’ve found it useful.”

While successive German governments have spent

£877 billion since 1990 giving the former communist east new motorways, shopping centres and some of Europe’s most modern factories, parts of the western German “rust belt” have been left to crumble. Gelsenkirchen and other towns in the once prosperous Ruhr say they need investment just as badly as the east.

North Rhine-Westphalia, the state in which the town lies, is crucial to Schröder’s hopes of winning a third term in 2006. The chancellor’s Social Democrats have staged a spectacular recovery in recent weeks, but victory could depend on how well they do in what has been their traditional power base.

Despite the gloom, Gelsenkirchen’s businessmen see some signs of hope. “Schröder is starting to change people’s mentality and make them realise you have to take responsibility for your own fate,” said Karl Schulte-Uebbing, head of the chamber of commerce.

“We’ve got a lot to offer: well-trained people ready to work hard and typical German orderliness, that’s an asset too.”

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