We will open up the labor market above and beyond the Hartz reforms; we will discourage illegal employment and make greater efforts to ensure that enough training positions are available. But it must also be clear that although we have worked quickly to legislate the Hartz proposals, it will take some time before the effect of the reforms is felt on the labor market. Our solution cannot and will not be to simply abandon our active labor market policies, above all in the Eastern German states [Länder], even before the new structures have been established and had a chance to take effect.
Therefore, we will need to maintain a second labor market in Eastern Germany for a transitional period. By the way, this holds true not only for Eastern Germany, but also for other particularly disadvantaged regions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot just improve the conditions for business and the labor markets. We also have to think about our welfare system and ask ourselves if welfare assistance really helps those who need it.
I do not accept the idea that people who can and want to work have to go to the social welfare office, while others who aren’t even on labor market can claim unemployment benefits [Arbeitslosenhilfe].
Nor do I accept the idea that people who are equally ready to work should receive different levels of financial assistance. Successful integration cannot take this form.
Therefore, we need a one-stop agency to provide all the relevant services. That way we can increase the opportunities of those who can and want to work. For this reason, we are going to merge unemployment assistance and welfare benefits. And to be precise – this, too, must be said – we are going to merge them at a level equal to that of present welfare benefits.
At the same time, we are also doing more for the people from whom we have to demand more. We are therefore putting an end to the practice that caused the long-term unemployed to lose all entitlements to benefit payments when they accepted a job. For this reason, for a fixed period, long-term unemployed persons who start working will be allowed to receive considerably more than the current 15 percent of their benefits. This should and will be an incentive for people to take up employment.
This is a clear message to those people in our society who have been unemployed for more than twelve months. In the future, however, no one will be allowed to live off the community. Anyone who refuses a reasonable offer of work – and we will be modifying the criteria for what constitutes reasonable – will have to reckon with the imposition of sanctions.
Furthermore, we are reforming those aspects of labor and social law that have become obstacles to employment over the years. But here, too, I have something to say upfront: protection against dismissal, as an inherent part of our social market economy, is not just a social achievement, but also an economic and cultural one.
Our country has not become strong through the laws of the jungle or unscrupulous hiring and firing, but rather through secure employees who are motivated not by fear but by the will to achieve something together with capable employers.
But we are aware of the tremendous changes that are occurring in the foundations of our economy. Therefore, we have to make changes, even to dismissal protection, to make it less unwieldy for employees and also for companies. This is especially true for small firms with more than five staff members. We must lower the psychological barrier that such firms must cross before hiring someone new. The economics and labor minister has developed pertinent recommendations, which will be implemented without any compromises.
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