Trade unions have criticized the traffic light coalition’s planned increase in earnings for mini-jobs. DGB board member Anja Piel spoke of a huge mistake on Saturday. Guido Zeitler, chairman of the Food, Pleasure and Restaurant Union (NGG), criticized the fact that raising the earnings limit for mini-jobs from 450 to 520 euros posed the risk that mini-jobs would crowd out more and more regular jobs. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP), on the other hand, spoke of good news for everyone who works in a mini-job: “For many hard-working people such as students or pensioners, this is the chance of a little more net.”
The upper earnings limit for mini-jobs is to rise from 450 to 520 euros per month on October 1st. This should happen at the same time as the increase in the minimum wage to twelve euros, Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil told the newspapers of the Neue Berliner Redaktionsgesellschaft. “That’s what was agreed in the coalition – and that’s how we do it,” said the SPD politician.
In the coalition negotiations with the SPD and the Greens, the FDP had achieved that in connection with the one-off increase in the minimum wage by law, the upper earnings limit for mini and midi jobbers would also be raised. Otherwise, the part-time employees would have had to reduce their number of hours because the minimum wage also applies to them and they cannot increase their earnings. Mini-jobbers pay little or no social security contributions.
Part-time case without social protection
DGB board member Piel explained that the pandemic had shown: “In an emergency, marginal employees need social protection against unemployment and entitlement to sickness benefits. Mini-jobs also do nothing for their own pension. Therefore, the pension insurance obligation must apply to them without exception. The DGB wants that here the full social security contribution is borne by the employer. Employees can then gradually participate in the financing with increasing gross wages up to par.” In this way, the coalition can remove obstacles to taking up employment that is subject to compulsory insurance and prevent mini-jobs from becoming part-time and poverty traps for women.
The NGG chairman Zeitler criticized that mini jobs have been a part-time trap for years, especially for women. For them, poverty in old age is inevitable. It is wrong in terms of employment policy that the traffic light does not want to make mini-jobs subject to social security contributions from the first euro. “Mini-jobs must be regulated instead of raising the earnings limit. Yes, they should be abolished in this form. The pandemic has shown that people with mini-jobs without entitlement to unemployment benefits or short-time work benefits and without any social safety net have been catapulted out of the labor market. More than half Millions of mini-jobs have been lost, mostly in hospitality.”