Monday 15th November 2021
“Unplanned Corona Policy”
Medium-sized businesses upset about home office revival
When working from home, the Managing Minister Heil takes the Corona regulation out of the drawer, which was valid until June. Workers can work from home, but they don’t have to. While the DGB praises the traffic light plans, the middle class laments planlessness and contradictions.
Business representatives have criticized the plans of Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil to reintroduce the home office obligation in the corona pandemic: The planned reintroduction is an expression of the planlessness of the corona policy, said the managing director of the Federal Association of Medium-Sized Enterprises, Markus Jerger, the newspapers of the Funke media group . The majority of medium-sized companies have long since found individual business solutions. There is also no obligation to work from home if the 3G rule should generally apply in companies. “Home office was and is not practicable for entire industries, such as retail or craft businesses,” added Jerger.
If the Bundestag on Thursday and the Bundesrat approve the SPD politician’s draft on Friday, Germany will return to a regulation that was in place until June 30th. At that time, the obligation to work from home was anchored in the so-called federal emergency brake. It was canceled because the situation improved over the summer. Now it seems to the traffic light parties that this measure is appropriate again.
German trade union federation finds duty right
According to the Corona Occupational Safety and Health Ordinance, companies currently have to offer two tests per week and draw up hygiene plans. The reason for the current draft law shows that the employer can only refuse to work from home for office work if there are “compelling operational reasons”. Such reasons “can exist if the operational processes would otherwise be severely restricted or could not be maintained at all,” it says. A lack of technical equipment, for example with computers, is only temporarily considered a reason for prevention. According to the draft, employees can, for example, refuse to work in the home office if there is “limited space, interference from third parties or insufficient equipment”.
The German Trade Union Federation (DGB) had previously praised the plans of the traffic light parties. In view of the dramatically increasing number of corona infections, it is “right that employers are again obliged to offer home offices wherever possible,” said DGB chairman Reiner Hoffmann in the afternoon. “In the current situation, it is also right and important that employees basically have to take this offer seriously,” he added. “It has to be clear, however: Nobody should be forced to work in the home office. The fact that working from home is not possible must suffice as an acclamation.”