German labor minister insists on work from home after pandemic, wants to back the idea with new law
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic is changing the way we live today -- more workers are forced to work from home to keep in line with social distancing and lockdown measures. Whether these changes will be reflected in a post-pandemic world remains yet to be seen, but the German Labor and Social Affairs Minister, Hubertus Heil thinks workers should have the right to work from home, even after the pandemic passes.
Heil is quoted as having told German tabloid Bild am Sonntag, "Anyone who wants to, and whose workplace allows it, should be able to work at home – even when the coronavirus pandemic is over." Heil, a Social Democrat (SPD), said he would present legislation later in the year to anchor a right to home working in law.
The pandemic offers the chance to understand the scale that working from home is possible, said the labor minister. An estimated 8 million people, or 25% of Germany's workforce, are working from home across the country's 16 states – a rise from 12% before the pandemic. Between 2005 and 2017, there was a 159 percent increase in people working from home. In 2015, 3.9 million workers were working remotely in the United States. Before the pandemic, that number rose to 4.7 million workers, roughly 3.4 percent of the population.
Heil also said that whenever possible, all employees should be able to request working from home in the future, either switching completely to the home office or just one or two days a week. He said that additional rules would need to be in place to stop work "eating into private life." The new law would focus on increasing the possibility to work from home, but not force companies into doing so.
Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, also from the SPD, supported the idea, telling the tabloid, “The past weeks have shown how much is possible in the home office - this is a real achievement that we should not just abandon."
Katrin Göring-Eckardt, Germany's Green Party parliamentary group leader, also welcomed the suggestion. In a tweet, she called for the right to fast broadband internet to enable people to work most effectively from home. “A home office or mobile working must always be voluntary and needs binding rules. Nobody should be forced to do it, and a home office should not lead to work becoming limitless,” she said in a statement.
However, the German Employers’ Federation rejected it, telling the Funke media group that the last thing the battered economy needed at this time was more rules. Steffen Kampeter, head of the Federal Association of the German Employers' Federation called Heil's proposal a "political shelf warmer" that was "behind the times."
"We need a moratorium on burdensome legislation," he emphasized, saying more red tape would hamper economic growth. The economy cannot be kept running entirely by people working from home, he added.
Last year, the German Labor Ministry had mooted a similar proposal. In early 2019, Ministry Secretary Björn Böhnin told the magazine, Der Spiegel, that he was planning an initiative compelling German companies to either allow their employees to work from home or justify why it is not possible.