Kretschmann: Longer working hours for teachers

Created: 04/25/2022Updated: 04/26/2022 05:47

Winfried Kretschmann, Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg.

© Christoph Schmidt/dpa/archive image

Because of the economic consequences of the Ukraine war, there has recently been a lot of talk of impositions.

People will have to limit themselves - Prime Minister Kretschmann is certain of that.

And comes up with a surprising suggestion.

Stuttgart - Baden-Württemberg's Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) has discussed longer working hours for teachers in order to ensure better education in the state.

"Maybe we have to work more," Kretschmann pointed out on Monday evening at a panel discussion in the "Stuttgarter Zeitung".

For example, a large number of teachers are women and many of them work part-time.

"If they all worked an hour more, an hour, I would have 1,000 more teachers that I urgently need," said the Greens politician.

"That might also be an issue."

The school has a central role in the fight against the shortage of skilled workers, which is already a major problem in Baden-Württemberg.

"We have to put more into it." Depending on the type of school, teachers have slightly different weekly working hours.

Pedagogues in elementary schools work 28 hours a week, in Hauptschule and Realschule 27 hours, in Gymnasium 25 hours.

In elementary schools in particular, the proportion of female teachers is very high.

In the southwest there are a good 110,000 teachers at general schools.

GEW criticizes Kretschmann's initiative as "totally wrong"

Monika Stein, head of the GEW education union, was outraged by Kretschmann's proposal.

"That's totally wrong," she told the German Press Agency.

"The part-time teachers don't work less because it's fun to earn less money, but because it is necessary for them to work part-time so that they can do their job well." It's also about family and job going under to bring a hat.

After two years of the pandemic with excessive stress, many teachers and school management are already at the end of their power anyway, said the trade unionist.

Now there are children and young people who have fled from the Ukraine.

"If I increase the load further, significantly more teachers will be absent," Stein warned.

After all, the Prime Minister had gained knowledge.

"Congratulations, Herr Kretschmann, that after eleven years in government you are now realizing that you have a shortage of teachers." The GEW had always predicted that.

Kretschmann considers "loss of prosperity" to be acceptable

At the panel discussion of the "Stuttgarter Zeitung", Kretschmann was convinced that the state cannot cushion all the economic consequences of the Ukraine war for German consumers.

"It will not work without restrictions." Ten years ago, prosperity was significantly lower than today, and yet people did not live "on trees" back then.

"You don't have to pretend that material losses in prosperity are something that affects your well-being." Kretschmann added, with a view to higher heating and petrol costs: "For people who are really hard hit because they have low incomes anyway, for that we have a well-developed welfare state that has to take action there.”

The Green spoke out against "watering can benefits".

"Making petrol cheaper for everyone now cannot be the solution," said Kretschmann.

"I really can't get used to that." Instead, one has to invest in the energy transition, for example, to make oneself less dependent on Russian gas.

Realize wind turbines in two years

With the expansion of wind power, Kretschmann wants to push the pace even harder than before.

The period from planning to construction of a wind farm must be reduced to two years.

"We're just too slow.

If we don't get faster, the energy transition will fail due to time constraints," warned the head of government.

So far, the realization of a wind farm takes about six to seven years.

Kretschmann had previously set the goal of at least halving the period.

The coalition partner CDU is even more ambitious and wants to ensure that wind farms can be realized within a year.

EnBW board member Georg Stamatelopoulos was less optimistic.

"It's realistic to say that we can halve that." It is conceivable to be able to put a wind farm into operation after three years, he said during the discussion.

Kretschmann wants to make excuses “on draft”.

The prime minister said the pressure to switch quickly to renewable energies had doubled again as a result of the Ukraine war.

"Every excuse is made to pass." Kretschmann hopes that the conditions for faster expansion will be in place by the summer.

He wanted "that it slips".

Even after ten years of green government, the south-west is still far behind in the expansion of wind power.

Three wind turbines were built in the first quarter, but 100 are needed a year, said Kretschmann.

He also called on the European Union to accept the so-called southern quota for the expansion of wind energy in Germany.

The EU should not be there with a "internal market radicalism" and suppress any flexibility in the member states.

With the quota, the federal government wants to make the construction of new wind turbines more attractive again in the southern federal states.

dpa