As of: February 19, 2024, 10:02 a.m
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
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Hubertus Heil (SPD), Federal Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, speaks at the regular federal party conference.
© Kay Nietfeld/dpa
Rainer Schlegel, President of the Federal Social Court, calls for the abolition of mini-jobs in order to relieve the burden on social security funds.
Minister Hubertus Heil considers this to be unrealistic.
Berlin – A good way to improve your finances or the direct route to old age poverty?
Opinions differ when it comes to mini-jobs.
Rainer Schlegel, President of the Federal Social Court, recently called for mini-jobs to be abolished.
Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) has now rejected this demand.
Minister Heil: “It is legitimate to think about further reforms”
“It is important to me that work subject to social insurance is more worthwhile,” Heil told the newspapers of the Funke media group (Monday): “It is legitimate to think about further reforms.
But given the coalition agreement, that is not an issue for this legislative period.”
The minister instead referred to increasing the minimum wage and reducing social security contributions for low earners.
In this way, the traffic light government ensured that employees had more money in their pockets.
President of the Federal Social Court calls for the abolition of mini-jobs
For mini-jobs there is a maximum monthly wage of 538 euros for a maximum of 70 days of work per calendar year.
However, due to the lack of social security contributions, mini-jobs do not provide social security, warns the Federal Employment Agency.
There is a risk of poverty in old age if you rely too heavily on mini-jobs because you then pay too little into your pension fund and are left on social assistance in retirement.
For Rainer Schlegel, President of the Federal Social Court, mini-jobs are “an anachronism from times of high unemployment,” as he recently
said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).
“They should be abolished or only allowed for pupils and students.
Such a reform would relieve the burden on social security funds and be good for the labor market,” Schlegel told the newspaper.
It is clear to him that mini-jobs are very popular.
But part-time employment is “not socially fair because it imposes costs on the general public, at the latest in terms of old age security”.
Mini-job in full-time employment: “It’s a vicious circle”
As of September 30, 2023, almost 6.7 million mini-jobbers in businesses and almost 258,000 mini-jobbers in private households were registered with the mini-job headquarters, and the trend is rising.
Many people use it to supplement their salary - but for more and more people, the mini-job is also their main job.
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According to figures from the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB), one in ten mini-jobbers in Germany are now full-time workers.
For many employees there is often no other option.
“People need these jobs and there are few others on offer,” says Timo Ahr, vice-chairman of the DGB Rhineland-Palatinate/Saar, to the
Tagesschau
.
However, it is often the company's business model that is based on mini-jobs.
“And many people find it difficult to get out of this because they are often threatened with dismissal.
It’s a vicious circle.”