By Gunnar Schupelius
Employees in the public sector feel unfairly treated because the state has no money for them but spends a lot elsewhere. This anger is understandable, says Gunnar Schupelius.
Verdi’s wage demands are controversial: 10.5 percent more, for the lower income groups a flat rate of 500 euros gross per month, which would correspond to an increase of up to 20 percent.
Some consider these demands to be exaggerated, but the majority of employees apparently do not. There was a great willingness to go on a warning strike and it can be assumed that an indefinite strike would be decided in a ballot. The employees of Deutsche Post made the decision, whereupon the employer gave in.
I spoke out against the high wage demands from Verdi and EVG, arguing that the subsequent additional expenditure would have to be borne by everyone.
The readers have criticized me for this by a large majority. This expressed a great deal of uneasiness about politics and the feeling of being treated unfairly.
What they write can be summed up as follows: The state has money for everything and everyone, for example for the Ukrainians or for arms deliveries to Ukraine. Every asylum seeker gets almost as much as a pensioner after 40 years of work and the chancellor doubles his chancellorship for almost one billion euros.
So why does this state, which spends so generously, not give its employees even ten percent? They all want to know. “Why should public employees do without?” asks Jutta Ayivon. “Our MPs have written into the law that their diets will automatically increase regularly. And it is precisely this group of people who consider the wage demands of the trade unions to be disproportionate,” writes Andre Knospe.
A great general anger has built up here, which is understandable. You spend the money lavishly, but then save on your own servants. You get the feeling that you treat your own people worse than others.
The Federal Chancellery is symbolic of the waste of money. It is to be doubled for 777 million euros and would then be four times the size of the former building in Bonn. A reasonable justification is not provided. Chancellor Scholz is sticking to this plan despite all the criticism.
And money doesn’t seem to matter for the top staff either: since taking office, the red-green-yellow federal government has taken on 183 new top jobs with B salaries, with salaries between 7,200 and 15,000 euros per month.
Most of the new jobs were created at Economics Minister Habeck (Greens), Building Minister Geywitz (SPD) and in the Chancellery. There is never a justification for the need to create such new positions, which the Federal Court of Auditors has repeatedly objected to. At the very top with the ministers and the chancellor, you take care of yourself, so there is enough money there for very high salaries.
The list of waste could be continued indefinitely. And if the federal, state and local governments now claim that their pockets are empty and that they cannot increase salaries, that is implausible as long as the waste is not stopped.
As long as the great Verdi anger is quite understandable. Whether the demands are reasonable is another matter.
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