Employers threaten salvation with “fundamental opposition”

That Hubertus Heil (SPD) is not usually perceived as an ally by employers. Nevertheless, the Federal Minister of Labor was respected for long stretches of his five-year term in business for his political professionalism and a certain pragmatism. Recently, however, critical distance towards Heil seems to have increasingly turned into open anger. Since Easter alone, Heil has twice hammered in political pegs in a way that employer representatives took as an affront. The current keywords are: Working Hours Act and minimum wage.

For the employers in the metal and electrical industry, whose associations represent a good 7,000 companies, Gesamtmetall President Stefan Wolf is now venting this anger in clear words. “The Federal Minister of Labor has clearly broken his word,” Wolf told the FAZ. “Such a policy no longer has anything to do with respect for collective bargaining and social partnership.” And he warns: “If politicians are not careful, we will soon reach a tipping point at which our Economic model no longer works like this.”

The allegation of breach of word refers primarily to Heil’s recent statements on the work of the minimum wage commission, in which the social partners are supposed to work out proposals for regularly adjusting the minimum wage limit, independent of political interference: Heil was closed Easter in the newspaper “Bild am Sonntag” and then also in front of television cameras, expressed the expectation that the commission would decide on a “significant increase” in the minimum wage this year. The next decision by the committee, in which three trade union and three employer representatives are to find a balance of interests, is due on June 30 and relates to the adjustment as of January 1, 2024.

Political interference upsets

The sensitivity to such interference is increased anyway, since the traffic light coalition has just pushed through the minimum wage increase to 12 euros on October 1, 2022, beyond the commission, an increase of 25 percent compared to the previous year. There had been many political assurances that this intervention would remain a one-time exception, including from Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). The Commission should work freely and independently – that’s what the SPD and its former Labor Minister Andrea Nahles promised when the statutory minimum wage was introduced in 2015, Wolf recalls.

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Against this background, the draft for a new working hours law just presented by Heil’s ministry is triggering all the more resentment. In future, electronic time recording should in principle be prescribed for all employment relationships – even for those in which the working time “due to the special characteristics of the activity performed is not measured or not determined in advance”, as the draft says. In such cases, it would only be possible for employers and employees to mutually refrain from recording time in such cases with the explicit consent of a trade union.

Wolf is not alone

Not only total metal sees in the planned set of paragraphs the actual abolition of so-called trust-based working hours. “This is an affront to both employers and employees who have been using this tool for decades,” says the mechanical engineering association VDMA. And Thomas Dietrich, Federal Guild Master of the Building Cleaning Trade, speaks of a “policy for a factory gate republic” that “takes no account of practicality”. Gesamtmetall boss Wolf summarizes his judgment with these terms: “bureaucracy to the power of ten”, “totally contradictory” and “violation of the coalition agreement”.

In fact, the traffic light parties had agreed there that “flexible working time models (e.g. trust-based working hours) must continue to be possible”. The draft law formally fulfills this – but it defines the term “trust-based working hours” differently than it is usually understood in everyday life: Accordingly, the term does not describe a mutual renunciation of time recording, as has been widespread in creative or sales professions . Rather, according to the draft law, it is “trust-based working time” if the employer does not specify the exact time when work begins and ends. And that should remain allowed – but linked to the new obligation to document the times in such a way that they can be officially controlled for two years. Otherwise there is a risk of fines.

No more cumbersome specifications

“It’s not trust-based working hours, it’s flextime,” says Wolf. “Should we thank the Minister of Labor for not banning flexitime?” At the same time, he emphasizes that behind all the criticism from employers is not the goal of extending the framework of weekly working hours. However, it is unacceptable for the government to impose new, cumbersome requirements on companies in an already increasingly difficult economic environment – especially since the new “Supply Chain Due Diligence Act” has only just been imposed on them.

“All of this costs our companies more and more time, more money and more staff – resources that are then lacking in innovation and investment,” criticizes the Gesamtmetall President. One of Germany’s strengths so far has been the culture of a social partnership-based reconciliation of interests, Wolf sums up his picture of the situation. “But basically we can only respond to a policy like the one the Minister of Labor is currently pursuing with fundamental opposition.”