May 1st is a special day for the SPD - even more this year. In the corona crisis in particular, workers needed more support, the party leaders say. No matter whether they work in the home office or at the supermarket checkout.
Berlin (dpa) - Before the day of work on May 1, the SPD leadership demanded a right to home office with clear rules. In the medium term, more attention should be paid to how the workplaces are equipped at home.
"Actually, all employers should, for example, check at home whether the chair is suitable at all," said SPD boss Saskia Esken of the German Press Agency. "Now there is a kind of emergency, but in the medium term there must be a right to a home office with clear rules." Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil (SPD) wants to enshrine a right to a home office by law and submit a draft by autumn.
Many working parents currently have to do both job and childcare at home. Esken demanded that they need a clear signal when and under what conditions school and daycare could start again. One possibility is to send the children to school in a kind of shift operation two or three days a week.
In addition, the SPD boss proposed to ease the contact restrictions for families easily. You could team up with two other families and only meet regularly in this group. "As necessary as our precautions are to prevent an increase in corona infections, I still believe that the form of contact restrictions does not do families, especially children and adolescents, well," said Esken. Children needed contact with other children.
May 1st this year has a special meaning for the SPD, said SPD leader Norbert Walter-Borjans. The Social Democrats are primarily calling for better wages for employees in the so-called systemically relevant professions. "Suddenly we all notice who the top performers of this society are, without whom we cannot cope: nurses, for example, or those who put shelves in the supermarket at the checkout," said Esken. "Now it is important not only to invent a pandemic surcharge and make it tax-free. That is a nice signal, but we want these people to earn better in the long term and also have effective employee rights."
Walter-Borjans accused the Union of blocking it. For the conservatives in the CDU and CSU, spending money is not a problem when it comes to large companies. Debts of 156 billion euros would largely be raised to support companies and safeguard jobs. "But when it comes to a single-digit billions for short-time workers or a basic pension, the cash register is suddenly empty right here," he criticized.
