Nahles is to become head of the Federal Employment Agency

Created: 01/25/2022, 18:15

Andrea Nahles is to succeed Detlef Scheele.

© Thomas Frey/dpa

Coping with the pandemic, shortage of skilled workers, structural change: there is a lot to do for the Federal Employment Agency.

At the top there is a change, there is a comeback.

Berlin/Nuremberg - The former SPD leader and Minister of Labor Andrea Nahles is to become the new head of the Federal Employment Agency.

This emerges from a personnel package that employers and unions agreed on.

The federal government still has to agree to this.

Nahles would return to the big stage.

As the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA) and the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) announced, Nahles is to become chairwoman of the board of directors of the Federal Employment Agency (BA) at the suggestion of the employees.

She would thus become Detlef Scheele's successor.

The 65-year-old has been BA boss since 2017 and will soon be retiring.

The employers, in turn, proposed Katrin Krömer and Vanessa Ahuja as new board members.

To date, Krömer has been the head of human resources and management development at Deutsche Bahn AG, while Ahuja is head of department at the Federal Ministry of Labor.

According to the announcement, the three new board members still have to be elected by the BA administrative board and all groups represented there.

The BA board will thus be expanded from three to four people.

Nahles (51) resigned as party and faction leader in 2019 after an SPD debacle in the European elections and internal pressure.

Previously, she was Federal Minister of Labor from 2013 to 2017 - so she is also very familiar with the concerns of the BA.

Nahles has been President of the Federal Post and Telecommunications Agency since August 2020.

In addition to Scheele, BA board member Christiane Schönefeld is also retiring.

Employers and trade unions announced that the aim of the social partners when filling the appointments for the future board of directors was to mutually set up a team that is prepared for the extraordinary challenges.

In the case of the people proposed by the social partners, this will succeed in cooperation with Daniel Terzenbach, who will ensure continuity on the board.

According to employers and trade unions, the Federal Employment Agency will have to shoulder enormous, “even downright epochal challenges” in the coming years.

They mentioned the management and consequences of the corona pandemic in the processing of short-time work benefits, the implementation of the coalition agreement and the management of structural change, transformation and the shortage of skilled workers.

Business associations are warning of an intensification of the shortage of skilled workers in the coming years.

In addition, all of this also occupies the BA itself as an employer, according to the BDA and DGB: “Budget consolidation, human resources management and digitization of administration will also challenge the future board of directors.”

The federal agency had spent billions of dollars to combat the corona crisis.

There were no massive slumps in the labor market.

This was mainly due to short-time work, which was greatly expanded during the pandemic.

CFO Schönefeld recently told the German Press Agency that the federal agency would need a long time to build up a reserve to fight off the crisis after the Corona years.

According to previous calculations, the Corona crisis has cost the Federal Agency around 52 billion euros.

The social security contributions for short-time workers alone would have almost completely eaten up the Federal Agency's reserve of almost 26 billion euros.

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In addition to overcoming the pandemic, the BA will have other tasks.

The traffic light coalition wants the federal agency to play a stronger role in qualification and related advice, as stated in the coalition agreement.

In addition, with a qualification allowance based on short-time work benefits, the BA can enable companies undergoing structural change to keep their employees in the company through qualification and to secure skilled workers.

dpa