Status: 11/15/2021 11:35 a.m.
The federal government wants to reintroduce the home office requirement. The middle class criticizes this, employers’ associations for their part make demands. Unions want to prevent employees from being forced to work from home.
The corona situation in Germany is coming to a head: the nationwide seven-day incidence has exceeded the 300 mark for the first time, and more than 3000 Covid-19 patients are currently being treated in intensive care units. Against this background, there is increasing debate about the proposal to reintroduce the home office obligation for employees, which expired at the end of June. This obligation is part of a draft law by the Federal Ministry of Labor for the 3G rule in the workplace. The draft is to be voted on on Thursday in the Bundestag and on Friday in the Bundesrat.
According to the plans of Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil, employees should have to present their employer with proof of vaccination or proof of recovery. If they are neither vaccinated nor recovered, according to the draft law they would have to submit a current corona test every day before entering their workplace. An antigen test no longer than 24 hours old or a PCR test no longer than 48 hours old should be accepted. Employers are threatened with a fine if they do not control the status.
“Breaking the fourth wave”
Representatives of the possible traffic light coalition made up of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP also discussed the obligation to work from home at the weekend and commented on it. Katja Mast, the deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, thinks it is correct. “More home office and 3G at work help to break the fourth wave – also to protect those who cannot work from home.”
A spokesman for the Green parliamentary group said it was true that the traffic light partners wanted to reintroduce the obligation to work from home. Previously, the Greens chairman Robert Habeck had described 3G at work and a renewed use of home office as urgent.
The FDP parliamentary group said that they were “open to good suggestions”. The Free Democrats indicated that in view of the dramatic Corona situation, it was “more likely” that both 3G at work and the home office requirement for office work would be introduced.
DGB for the obligation to work from home
The German Trade Union Federation (DGB) supports the plans: In view of the dramatically increasing number of corona infections, it is “right that employers are again obliged to offer home offices wherever possible,” said DGB Chairman Reiner Hoffmann.
“In the current situation, it is also right and important that employees basically have to take this offer seriously,” he added. “It has to be clear, however: Nobody should be forced to work in the home office. The fact that working from home is not possible must suffice as an acclamation.”
Medium-sized businesses against the obligation to work from home
The plans are an expression of the planlessness of the Corona policy, criticizes the managing director of the Federal Association of Medium-Sized Business, Markus Jerger, in the newspapers of the Funke media group.
The majority of medium-sized companies have long since found individual business solutions for face-to-face work during the corona pandemic: “For entire industries, such as retail or craft businesses, home office was and is not practicable anyway ??, said Jerger:” That is why we say no to one Restart of the home office obligation. “
“No wage entitlement”
The President of the Federal Association of German Employers’ Associations (BDA), Rainer Dulger, demanded in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ) the possibility for employers to inquire about the vaccination status of employees. Dulger goes even further: “Anyone who does not show up for work for reasons for which he is responsible cannot claim any wages for the lost work,” said Dulger. Otherwise, there is a risk of imbalance, “if people who refuse to have tests and vaccinations would be rewarded with paid leave.”
Dulger also objected to the fact that tests should take place during paid working hours, as the unions are calling for. “Everything that has to do with a pandemic cannot take place at the employers’ expense,” he told the FAZ.
Fierce criticism comes from the Union. The chairman of the middle class parliamentary group of the Union faction in the Bundestag, Christian von Stetten, told the “Augsburger Allgemeine” that a new home office obligation “would be the wrong signal for an economy that is slowly returning to normal”. A 3G obligation at the workplace, however, is “a more sensible approach that offers protection and does not unnecessarily inhibit the economic cycle.”