Wednesday January 12, 2022
Heil plans legal claim
Home office should not remain an exception
For many people in the country, working life has changed suddenly with the corona pandemic. Regardless of whether a virus is raging or not: Labor Minister Heil wants to stick to the home office concept. Employers are anything but enthusiastic about it.
Talk to colleagues via zoom and no traffic stress in the morning: The pandemic-related home office has turned the daily work of millions of people in the country upside down. A “new freedom” that needs to be preserved – says Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil, who wants to establish working from home permanently in Germany.
“I am in favor of the fact that we draw fundamental consequences for the world of work from the corona-related, unplanned large-scale attempt to work from home,” said Heil. He wants to create a legal right to work from home – regardless of whether a virus is raging or not, says the minister.
The traffic light coalition made up of the SPD, Greens and FDP agreed on the new rules: “A modern regulatory framework for mobile working is coming.” Heil’s plans provide that employers must enable their employees to work from home in the future – unless operational reasons speak against it.
“If they want to reject this, there must be operational reasons against it – for example because you work on the blast furnace in the steelworks and of course you can’t work from home,” Heil explained. In any case, employees should be able to “discuss” this with their superiors in the future. “If the employer cannot give any operational reasons, then the legal right to be able to use home office applies.” The minister hopes that this will also improve the work-life balance.
There are still unanswered questions and worries
According to the latest information from the Munich-based Ifo Institute, according to a company survey in December of last year, 27.9 percent of employees worked at least temporarily in the home office. In August the rate was 23.8 percent. Since November, the pandemic-related obligation for employers to offer their employees home office has been in effect – unless operational reasons speak against it. Heil wants to make the current state of emergency the standard system.
But there are still unanswered questions and worries that have long been associated with the home office. Psychologists have been warning against being lonely in your own four walls since the home office changeover began. There are other problems with devices and equipment: As a representative Forsa survey by the Techniker Krankenkasse (TK) showed last year, a good four out of ten home office employees (38 percent) say that they feel comfortable with a poorly equipped home office. Feeling stressed at work, one in five of them even often (22 percent).
So what do you do when the uncomfortable kitchen table is the only place to work? And what does the employer actually have to pay financially for? Important questions regarding the design still remain open. The German trade union federation is calling for clear rules – also for the health protection of employees. Minister of Labor Heil promises to narrow down “the downsides in the home office”. “Work shouldn’t make you sick,” he says. Even those who only wanted to work from home occasionally should be able to take advantage of this flexibility.
Home office is “standard” in many companies
The DGB and the IG Metall union expressly welcome these plans. Many employees did not want to do without the home office even after the pandemic, argues the DGB. IG Metall once again specifically points out those employees who, due to the nature of their work, cannot claim to work from home. “You can’t build a car at the kitchen table,” writes the union. Colleagues in the factories should not be worse off than people in the mobile office, demands IG Metall with a view to the planned regulatory framework of the traffic light parties.
Employers, on the other hand, reject a legal right to work from home. “In parts of the coalition there is obviously a mess between the party program and the coalition agreement,” said Steffen Kampeter, General Manager of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA). The coalition agreement of the traffic light parties does not see “the creation of a legal claim, but a right to be discussed when working from home”.
Home office is “standard” in many companies and will remain so after the pandemic, he said. “This does not require any legal entitlement, but rather trusting cooperation in the company.” The digital association Bitkom also considers a legal right to home office to be “the wrong way”, as it says in a message. The Federal Government is not allowed to “overshoot the target” and has to basically leave the decision on how to work with the companies, the association demands.