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Chancellery: Up to 90 percent of employees work from home
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
The federal government has declared the withdrawal from the workplace to the home office to be the central component in the fight against the corona pandemic.
From next week at the latest, company employees should stay at home if possible if they can do their work from there.
Employers would have to enable employees to work from home in the case of office work or comparable activities, if there were no compelling operational reasons to prevent this, according to the planned regulation.
Business associations had blocked a legal obligation to work at home for weeks.
However, the critics are not satisfied with the fact that the obligation has now given way to a waxy formulation that offers companies a lot of leeway.
The digital association Bitkom also points out that the public administration has a lot of catching up to do: "Most of the five million employees in the public sector could work at home from their job, very few have been able to do so so far," said Bitkom President Achim Berg.
At least the ministries of the federal government do not want to accept the accusation, as SPIEGEL asked the individual ministries.
The obligation to be present there is limited to the absolutely necessary business needs, it is said in unison from the 14 departments.
Nevertheless, the odds are quite different.
According to a government spokesman, for example,
up to 90 percent
of employees
in the Federal Chancellery work
from home, provided their work permits.
In the
Ministry of Agriculture and Food
,
all employees
are in
principle required
to work mobile as much as possible, as a spokesman said.
"Exceptions also apply here for the jobs that have to be filled on site."
In the unofficial ranking, for example, follow the
development aid ministry with a rate of 80 to 85 percent,
the
economics ministry (80 percent),
and the
federal finance ministry (60 to 80 percent)
.
The Family and Seniors Department is also exemplary: "Experience has shown that an average of less than 15 percent of employees are present in the service buildings every day," explains a spokeswoman.
Exemplary federal ministries
The
Ministry of the Interior achieves a rate of 70 percent
, but points to its special role during the pandemic.
For example, the joint crisis team “BMI – BMG-Covid 19” performs large parts of its tasks within the BMI's properties.
This also applies to service units that have to work in-house.
The
Ministry of
the
Environment is a
little less specific
: “The BMU currently has a maximum reduction in attendance.
In principle,
all employees are encouraged
to work on the move, ”explains a spokeswoman.
Likewise in
the education and research department
: "The possibility of working from home is available almost everywhere in the BMBF and is used according to the infection rate," it says there.
As with all other ministries, this cannot be verified.
The
Federal Foreign Office
also gives
a slightly lower rate of
70 percent
.
“Working from home is not possible without restrictions in all areas of work at the Federal Foreign Office, because the respective tasks require a physical presence on site in whole or in part,” explains a spokesman.
Even in the
defense department
, whose around 2,500 employees need special IT access to access confidential information, the management
says they have sent
almost 70 percent of the workforce
home.
For the so-called »red systems« with security-relevant information, however, some departments in the ministry are on duty.
In the
House of Labor Minister
Hubertus Heil all employees are equipped with office work with mobile access technology, according to information of a speaker.
“The teams and managers are kept up to date, following the principle of“ stay at home ”wherever possible;
technically, this can be up to 100 percent of all employees with office workplaces. ”Even the
Ministry of Health
does
not want to quantify
the proportion of home office employees
:“ The exact number of employees who currently work on a daily or hourly mobile basis cannot be quantified .
There are few workplaces in the BMG that are not suitable for using mobile work, so that the employees continue to work on site. "
States and municipalities do worse
In contrast, the authorities in the administration of federal states and municipalities apparently still have a lot of catching up to do.
According to a study by the civil servants' association dbb and the Hertie School of Governance, only the employees in the authorities at the federal level worked from home in the summer, with a majority of 67 percent.
In the case of employees at state level, it was only 55 percent - and the municipalities only had a quota of 37 percent.
And if you believe the anecdotal reports of many public employees, not much has changed in this regard.
However, the numbers cannot be easily compared.
Because not all tasks can be performed at the kitchen table at home.
This applies, for example, to public prosecutors and judges who are only allowed to process court files at the official seat.
The health authorities are also subject to data protection restrictions.
In the citizens' office, officials have to be at the counter and street cleaning cannot be digitized either.
But many activities can very well be carried out from home if only the will was there - and the necessary technology: "As far as digitization is concerned, the public service - especially in the community-based area - is still stuck in the Cretaceous", says dbb chairman Ulrich Silberbach.
This is the result of a decade-long austerity policy.
Against this background, statements by Michael Müller (SPD) recently caused criticism.
The governing mayor of Berlin had asked employers to enable their employees to work from home.
Most of the city's 120,000 government employees are far from it.
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