Icon: enlarge
SPD Labor Minister Heil: Massive criticism of the home office proposal
Photo: FILIP SINGER / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
The criticism from the CDU and CSU on the initiative by Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) for a planned legal right to at least 24 days home office does not stop.
"The labor minister could not have made a more unusable proposal," said Hamburg CDU state chairman Christoph Ploß to SPIEGEL.
"It is completely incomprehensible why Hubertus Heil makes such suggestions in the middle of the corona crisis."
Many companies are currently trying desperately to keep their employees, and the Minister of Labor has "nothing better than to burden the German economy with new guidelines," said Ploß.
"That completely ignores reality. Hubertus Heil should rather support initiatives to reduce bureaucracy, such as accelerating approval procedures for investments in infrastructure."
Heil had made his plans public over the weekend.
He wants to give employees a legal right to work from home for at least 24 days a year.
Employees should be able to assert this right wherever it is possible, "said the minister of" Bild am Sonntag ".
According to its own statements, Heil wants the 24 days to be understood as the lower limit.
Sharp criticism came from the Union at the weekend.
CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt called Heil's advance in the "Bild" newspaper "not expedient."
Whether one can work in the home office must remain a decision of the employees and employers.
More flexibility in working hours is more important, said Dobrindt: "We therefore want to move away from the eight-hour day to a flexi week with a maximum weekly working time."
This would enable employees and companies to make working hours more flexible and individual.
The chairman of the middle class parliamentary group of the Union parliamentary group, Christian von Stetten (CDU), told the German press agency: "Where home office is possible, it is a win-win situation for both sides. But the employer is also in Decide in the future where the work he paid for is to be performed. The SPD should return to reality and not tell the citizens any nonsense. "
The SPD had already rejected the criticism.
"The blanket criticism from parts of the economy and the Union completely bypasses the everyday life of many people," said the deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, Katja Mast.
"This almost ritually stubborn refusal is of no use to anyone."
Mast emphasized: "It is finally time to talk about how the right to work from home is becoming a reality."
Icon: The mirror
til / dpa / AFP