Sunday May 30th 2021
Federal government plans reform
Childless people should pay higher care contributions
More salaries for nurses – that is the goal of a new nursing reform that the Union and SPD want to push. The project is to be financed from next year by increasing the contribution rate for long-term care insurance for childless people.
The federal government has agreed on a nursing reform that should contribute to better pay for nursing staff. From September 2022, the approval of retirement homes and care services will be made dependent on remuneration according to the tariff. This emerges from a cabinet proposal from Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn. The agreement was coordinated with Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and Labor Minister Hubertus Heil, it was said from government circles. Both had asked for a collective bargaining agreement.
The project is to be financed from 2022 by increasing the contribution rate for long-term care insurance for childless people by 0.1 points to 3.4 percent of gross wages and a federal subsidy of one billion euros per year. Spahn recently requested a grant of 2.6 billion euros.
According to the current status, the agreement is to be approved by the cabinet next Wednesday. Since these are formally changes to a draft law that has already been submitted to the Bundestag, parliament can decide on the nursing reform in June before the summer break.
Incentive for collective agreements
The current draft law also provides for a limitation of the home residents’ own share of the care costs so that better pay for care workers is not at their expense. A new addition is that care facilities must either be bound by collective bargaining agreements from September 2022 or pay wages at least as much as a care collective agreement. This should also apply to existing care facilities.
Nursing facilities that are not bound by collective bargaining agreements are given an incentive to apply collective agreements that are above the normal regional level, as the long-term care insurance funds reimburse the region’s average collective wage plus ten percent. According to calculations by the Ministry of Labor, around half of the approximately 1.2 million care workers are not paid according to the tariff. They earned about two euros less per hour.
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