Unfortunately, the reaction to Andrea Nahle’s personnel was to be expected. Her probable appointment to the head of the Federal Employment Agency (BA) is a clear case for many users of the so-called social media: having failed as a politician, the former SPD leader is provided with a well-paid position, although she is completely unsuitable. The unemployed Nahles is now the head of the unemployed, haha - as if the 51-year-old hasn’t been in charge of the Federal Post and Telecommunications Agency since 2020.
This reaction fits with widespread anti-political sentiment in Germany. They are allegedly overpaid, although every mediocre Dax manager laughs at MPs’ allowances and ministerial salaries. They are allegedly deeply corrupt, although apart from the disreputable mask deals by Union politicians in the pandemic, little has happened in recent years. This anti-sentiment contrasts with the fact that, by and large, Germany has been governed passably for decades – better than most countries in the world, anyway.
Nevertheless, anti-sentiment is always evident when a politician takes a post outside of politics. Sure, there will be a supply case. But the personnel of Nahles is not such. The former labor minister is very good at managing Germany’s employment agencies.
It is true that this chief post should not go to anyone. Huge tasks await the authorities. The climate-friendly restructuring of the economy and digitization are devaluing the knowledge of millions of workers. Training them further and, in some cases, requalifying them for new professions in order to avoid mass unemployment is central to the fate of the country. It is precisely this process that the job agencies have to control.
They should also develop recipes against a shortage of skilled workers. So that mothers and older people can find their way back to work more easily before Germany’s offices and factories become orphaned. In addition, the new BA boss must react to the consequences of Corona, such as more long-term unemployed, before people slip away from working life.
Why shouldn’t Andrea Nahles be able to do all this? Not only was she Minister of Labor from 2013 to 2017. She acted matter-of-factly and non-ideologically. At the time, even her employers praised her for this, some of whom now wanted to prevent her.
For society, the vocation is progress
Nahles also qualifies something that may not be important to every employer official: compassion for people who have lost their jobs or are barely making ends meet. It was she who, against great resistance, pushed through the minimum wage in 2015, which other industrialized countries have had for decades. And she initiated the SPD’s new welfare state concept, which is intended to eliminate the hardening of Hartz IV. Therefore, she appears to be the right person to implement the Hartz successor citizen money.
It doesn’t speak against Nahles that she was a politician. Almost all previous heads of the job agency came from politics. Contacts in Berlin and intimate knowledge of the processes there help in the office. Especially now that the Corona crisis has emptied the agency’s coffers. The previous BA boss Detlef Scheele, previously SPD social senator in Hamburg, skillfully ironed out the resistance to long short-time work benefits – and thus helped to prevent millions of unemployment in the Corona recession. And he brought his expertise to bear so that sanctions for Hartz IV/citizens’ allowances are not completely eliminated – unpopular, but necessary for a minority of unemployed people.
Nahles’ election has an advantage that may not be important to every employer official either. For society, on the other hand, it is progress that, after all the Heinrichs, Bernhards and Frank-Jürgens, an Andrea is the first to head the authority in 70 years. Now Nahles should show that she fights as a strong personality for all employees and job seekers. And not snuggling up with unions and employers on the powerful board of directors, who sometimes do their own thing.