Rainer Dulger, president of Germany’s BDA employers’ association, is demanding that the country’s new labor minister, Alexander Schweitzer, deliver quickly on a long-delayed pension reform and a rewrite of the working-hours law, n-tv.de reported.
Dulger told the portal t-online that he has formed a good impression of Schweitzer, an SPD politician who took over the ministry after the resignation of his predecessor, Bärbel Bas. If the pension reform bill is nearly finished, as Bas has said, then Schweitzer can show what he can do right away and bring it to the cabinet so the Bundestag can take it up, Dulger said. Time is pressing, he added.
Dulger wants the “retirement at 63” scrapped
The employers’ president said he is firmly in favor of abolishing the deduction-free early retirement option known in Germany as the “Rente mit 63,” available after 45 years of contributions. The program costs the pension insurance system several billion euros every year, Dulger said, and is often claimed by people for whom it was not originally intended. Those people are then missing from the labor market.
Higher pension contributions rejected as “worst of all ideas”
Dulger also rejected a suggestion floated by SPD parliamentary group leader Matthias Miersch to keep the early-retirement option and raise pension contributions instead. Higher contributions and thus higher social charges would be the worst of all ideas, Dulger said. Germany’s tax and contribution burden is already extremely high, he added, and raising contributions would make labor more expensive, leave workers with less net pay and increase the burden on companies, choking off growth and employment.
Working-hours law reform also on Dulger’s list
Beyond pensions, Dulger said the reform of the Working Hours Act must come, shifting the maximum working time from a daily to a weekly basis. Employers have been waiting far too long for an acceptable draft bill, he said, and Minister Schweitzer is the one responsible for delivering it.
Overall, Dulger said, the debate over pension reform has dragged on too long. At some point the time for discussion ends, and his patience is running out.
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