The largest employer in Munich is the city itself, and the corona pandemic has also led to a new work culture there. Many employees now frequently work from home. The green-red town hall coalition therefore issued the motto two years ago that the administration should cut 15 percent of its office jobs in the future. Almost every sixth desk is to be eliminated – also to save on expensive rental costs.
In autumn 2021, the city council commissioned the departments to make suggestions as to where areas could be reduced. The municipal department responsible for urban real estate has now evaluated this in a non-public submission that will be presented to the city council committee this Thursday. The template is available to the SZ, it provides interesting insights into the working world of the future in the city.
It shows that the willingness of the individual departments to save office jobs varies greatly. Some meet the required 15 percent savings. Others surpass them, most notably the IT department, which states that it can reduce 20 to 30 percent of office jobs – mainly through “desk sharing”, ie the shared use of desks.
Then there are those departments that calculate that savings are almost impossible or not possible at all. These include the cultural department with a rate of 4.7 percent and the planning department with zero percent. And finally, there are those authorities who state that they are cutting almost every sixth office job as desired, but where this is mainly due to the creation of new jobs. These include the Health Department and the Department for Climate and Environment.
The city has already given up eight office buildings, and another five will follow. The exact dates depend on the negotiations with landlords. By eliminating rental costs, the municipal department expects annual savings of five million euros. A further 2.5 million euros would be possible if more buildings, some of which were very centrally located, were to be abandoned, according to the proposal. Even then, however, the sum would be far removed from the 50 million euros that the former Green Party leader Florian Roth had named as possible annual savings at the end of 2020.
The green-red town hall majority sees the proposal as an impetus for discussion. The paper shows that the city is beginning to build new working environments. However, it still leaves many questions unanswered. The coalition therefore wants to postpone the decision at the request of the SPD/Volt faction. For example, the municipal department must create more transparency with regard to the question of how many square meters are used per employee – only then can the individual departments be better compared. This has not yet emerged from the lists in the template. It also cannot be the case that one authority reports savings of up to 30 percent while another only achieves the required 15 percent because it has been awarded new jobs. One thing is clear: the reserved individual seat is a thing of the past.
However, the Greens/Pink List point out that the conditions in the departments are very different. Authorities with a lot of customer contact are less suitable for home offices. The Greens also support the fact that municipal officer Kristina Frank (CSU) now wants to help with some pressure on the rather unwilling departments. Frank suggests that “in the case of future personnel hiring, only start with the specific space requirement check if the savings quota of 15 percent has been met”. This would mean that all departments would meet the required quota in the medium and long term, according to the calculation.
The departments have also given some thought to the reduction of archive and storage space. It is said again and again that this can be implemented in the long term, but the files cannot yet be digitized. Some city councilors may think of the trip to Venlo and Utrecht that local politicians made in 2019 to see new office space concepts in city administrations. At the time, they were amazed at how quickly the Dutch cities, albeit much smaller than Munich, not only implemented spatial modernization, but also digitization.