Labor Day lawsuit
Employer boss demands more hard work from Germans
May 1, 2024, 12:26 p.m
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On Labor Day, employer president Dulger also speaks about the topic – but with a slightly different emphasis than the unions. The head of the association complains about too many discussions “about the conditions of non-work”. And further: “There is no such thing as prosperity without effort.”
Employer President Rainer Dulger called for people to work more again on Labor Day. “We need more work in Germany, not less,” explained Dulger. “Germany discusses too much about the conditions of non-work and too little about the value of work,” complained the President of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA).
The focus must be on the question of how Germany can be made attractive again as a location. “This also means that we will all have to work more and longer,” Dulger made clear. To achieve this, the framework conditions for work would have to be improved.
“Work is much more than a necessity, this must be brought into greater focus again on May 1st,” emphasized the BDA boss and added: “There is no such thing as effortless prosperity. And: value creation is created by private entrepreneurs.”
Dulger also pointed out the value of social partnership. “In times of low growth, an increasingly aging society and a high shortage of workers and skilled workers, we have to work together to ensure good jobs and prosperity in Germany for the future,” emphasized the employer president.
He called on trade unions and politicians to “finally help shape work constructively again. That helps everyone: if the economy is booming, wages will also rise faster.”
DGB: USA laughs at Lindner’s “stinginess”
The unions used Labor Day to harshly criticize the federal government’s austerity measures. For the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB), board member Stefan Körzell called for a reform of the debt brake. “The debt brake is a brake on investment,” he told the Bavarian media group newspapers. The chairman of the Verdi service company, Frank Werneke, spoke of a “brake on the future”.
Körzell said that in the USA people were laughing at the “stinginess” of Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner. At the instigation of the FDP, the federal government is taking the wrong course with a “tough austerity policy”. Other countries acted more far-sightedly than Germany and were therefore “much better off”.
Necessary investments in “infrastructure, local and long-distance public transport or in education are no longer taking place or remain only piecemeal,” explained Werneke. Above all, the debt brake reduces the chances of the vast majority of people “who are dependent on functioning public services”.
In the newspapers of the Germany editorial network, Werneke threatened the federal government with a constitutional lawsuit if it implemented budget savings and hospital reform at the expense of contributors. In addition, like DGB boss Yasmin Fahimi, he spoke out against tax breaks for overtime. This means “discrimination against part-time workers and therefore often against women,” said Werneke.
Fahimi criticized the SPD in this context. This should “not jump over every stick that the FDP and Union give it,” she told “Spiegel”. Tax-free overtime, which the FDP and the Union are demanding, cannot be implemented because employers would reduce the regular working hours in the contracts in order to save taxes.