BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – Trade unions have criticized the traffic light coalition’s plan to raise the upper earnings limit for mini-jobs. DGB board member Anja Piel spoke of a huge mistake on Saturday. Guido Zeitler, chairman of the Food, Enjoyment and Restaurants union (NGG), criticized that with the increase in the earnings limit for mini-jobs from 450 to 520 euros, there was a risk that mini-jobs would crowd out more and more regular jobs.
Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP), on the other hand, spoke on Twitter on Saturday of good news for everyone who works in a mini-job: “For many hard-working people such as students or pensioners, this is the chance of a little more net.”
The upper earnings limit for mini-jobs is to rise from 450 to 520 euros per month on October 1st. This should happen at the same time as the increase in the minimum wage to twelve euros, Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil told the newspapers of the Neue Berliner Redaktionsgesellschaft (Saturday). “That’s what was agreed in the coalition – and that’s how we do it,” said the SPD politician.
Piel explained that the pandemic had shown: “In an emergency, part-time employees need social protection against unemployment and entitlement to sickness benefits. Mini-jobs also do nothing for their own pension. Therefore, compulsory pension insurance must apply to them without exception. The DGB wants the full social security contribution to be paid here is taken over by the employer. Employees can then gradually participate in the financing with increasing gross wages up to par.” In this way, the coalition could remove obstacles to employment subject to compulsory insurance and prevent mini-jobs from continuing to become part-time and poverty traps for women.
The NGG chairman Zeitler criticized that mini jobs have been part-time traps for years, especially for women. For them, poverty in old age is inevitable. It is wrong in terms of employment policy that the traffic light does not want to make mini-jobs subject to social security contributions from the first euro. “Mini-jobs must be regulated instead of raising the earnings limit. Yes, they should be abolished in this form. The pandemic has shown that people with mini-jobs without entitlement to unemployment benefits or short-time work benefits and without any social network have been catapulted out of the labor market. More than half Millions of mini-jobs lost, mostly in hospitality.”/hoe/DP/mis