At the beginning of this year, the Grand Coalition celebrated the law as a big hit: the bridge part should serve as a job engine and, above all, make it easier for women to return to work. But just under a year after the regulation came into force, workers rarely make use of it. In just three percent of companies, the right to part-time work is often used. This is shown by the "Randstad ifo personnel survey" among 800 personnel managers, who are exclusively present to SPIEGEL.
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Overall, one-third of the companies surveyed said that the bridge section would be used - but rarely in most cases. Every tenth company received "occasional" inquiries. The scientists did not provide a precise definition of the categories. "There was no rush to the bridge part," said study author Julia Schricker the SPIEGEL.
Already in advance there had been a lot of criticism of the bridge part time. According to government sources, 15 million of the 37 million employees in Germany can not make use of the scheme - because they work in small companies for which the regulation does not apply. That's about 40 percent of the workforce, most of them female. It is still predominantly women who reduce to take care of children at times or to look after their own parents. A consequence of long-term part-time jobs is then often poverty in old age: they also diminish the pension entitlements.
Since 2003, there has been a legal right to reduce working hours - but not to increase them again. "We end the part-time trap for many women," said the then deputy SPD faction leader Katja Mast to introduce the law. (Here a labor law expert explains the most important rules for the bridge part time)
Colleagues catch extra work
The current study now shows that workers in large companies with more than 200 employees are most likely to work part-time for limited periods. This is less common in companies with up to 200 employees: in two-thirds of the companies surveyed of this size, nobody worked in bridge part-time. In small companies with up to 45 employees, the rate is lowest. Only 16 percent said that employees took advantage of the bridge part-time - but these companies are just because of their size of the statutory obligation to offer their employees the part-time model.
In most cases, colleagues started the extra work that resulted from the reduced working hours of individual employees. Only every sixth company hired new employees. "The Bridge Part Time Act has so far worked neither as a job engine nor as a business barrier," write the study authors.
And one more point weakens the success of the bridge part: even before the legal claim was introduced at the beginning of the year, companies granted their employees part-time work. And this share has hardly changed. For example, 55 percent of the companies surveyed said that employees reduced their working hours in this way even before the law came into force. According to the study, this is even more than today: Currently, employees in 35 percent of companies use the bridge part time.
Part time only "in exceptional cases"
However, the values can not be exactly compared, since the possible answer categories differ in the study. For example, companies were able to state that they had granted the temporary part-time "in exceptional cases" before the law came into force. This category is missing in the survey after entry into force.
After all, a small success of the bridge part, the study can then make out. Prior to the entry into force of the law, twelve percent of companies had categorically ruled out temporary part-time arrangements. Especially in larger companies this is no longer legally possible.
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