Earnings Cap
Unions criticize raising the mini-job limit
The upper earnings limit for mini-jobs is to rise from 450 to 520 euros per month on October 1st. Photo: Frank Rumpenhorst/dpa
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From October 1st, mini-jobbers should be able to earn 520 euros a month instead of 450. Good news for Finance Minister Linder. The unions see this as a part-time and poverty trap.
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.
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.
Lindner sees it differently
Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP), on the other hand, spoke on Twitter 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. “It was agreed in the coalition – and that’s how we do it,” said the SPD politician.
DGB: Mini-jobs a poverty trap
Piel explained that the pandemic had shown: “In an emergency, marginal employees need social protection against unemployment and entitlement to sick pay. Mini-jobs are also useless for your own pension. Therefore, the pension insurance obligation must apply to them without exception. The DGB wants the employer to pay the full social security contribution. With increasing gross wages, employees can then gradually participate in the financing up to parity.” 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 increasing 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 a million mini-jobs have been lost, mostly in the hospitality industry.