The number of companies that have registered for short-time work in the corona crisis has risen to 650.000 increased. This was announced by the federal labor agency (BA) in nurnberg on thursday.
This represented an increase of around 40 percent over the youngest. To the 27. Marz was the number of 470.000 businesses have been identified.
The federal agency’s special survey does not provide information on how many people were registered for short-time work. This is only possible after the fact, because some companies apply for short-time work but then do not implement it. In addition, the number of employees per company varies greatly. However, the federal agency expects the previous record of more than 1.4 million short-time workers, set in may 2009, to be significantly exceeded.
The notices of short-time work came from all industries, with a focus on the hospitality and retail sectors.
When companies run into difficulties and reduce the working hours of their employees, the BA steps in and replaces part of the lost net income: 60 percent for childless employees and 67 percent for employees with children. Hundreds of thousands of companies have already registered for short-time work in the corona crisis. Some companies and industries top up the short-time allowance with their own contributions, so that the loss of income for the employees remains low.
Federal labor minister hubertus heil (SPD) declared in a statement on thursday that short-time benefits secure millions of jobs. "It helps to build bridges over the crisis."Heil recently brought up the idea of a general increase in short-time allowances and announced that he would talk to employers and unions about it.
The chairman of the federal agency’s executive board, detlef scheele, warned against making the procedure for applying for short-time work more complicated. At present, 8,000 employees at the employment agencies alone are entrusted with processing the notifications.
"There is a discussion in the political arena about increasing or extending the short-time allowance. For us as an administration, it is crucial that we can only cope with the increase in notifications if the procedure remains as unbureaucratic as it is now," said scheele. "It must not become more complicated."
The german federation of trade unions (dgb) calls for a significant increase in statutory short-time allowances. The current rates should be raised to 80 and 87 percent for a limited period of three months, DGB head reiner hoffmann told the deutsche presse-agentur. The temporary increase was to apply to the months of may, june and july.
Employer president ingo kramer, on the other hand, warned against an increase: the faster and the more of the BA’s rucksack, "which fortunately currently amounts to around 26 billion euros," is paid out, the faster it will be used up, kramer told the "rheinische post" (thursday). "We have done well with the previous high level of short-time allowance in past crises. That’s why I will not change the system lightly."
The chairmen of IG metall and the nature conservation association BUND, jorg hofmann and olaf bandt, also called on politicians to eliminate a "social imbalance" in the short-time allowance. "In cases of short-time work, employers will be reimbursed for their social security contributions – not only the employer’s share, but also the employee’s share," they announced in a joint statement. The federal government should therefore improve their mabnahmenpaket so that the employee share is passed on to the employees.