Germany’s social organizations like to attract attention with media-effective demands when it comes to inequality and poverty. That’s a good thing, after all it’s part of their job. The ideas are often controversial, sometimes useful – and sometimes unfortunately not thought through to the end.
The latter applies to the latest demand from Verena Bentele, head of the social association VdK: She wants mini-jobs to be banned. The starting point is current figures on multiple employment in Germany. They have never been as high as they are today: 4.29 million employees have more than one job. That is almost ten percent of all workers.
Bentele is right that widespread financial distress is the cause of this trend. Studies show that the majority of those with multiple jobs are simply dependent on additional income. Many mini-jobbers – most of them women – are poor or at risk of poverty, and their prospects for security in old age are lousy.
But there are also many people who do not take on multiple jobs out of necessity. The proportion of highly qualified and high earners among people with more than one job has risen significantly. There are many reasons for this: be it the opportunity to earn something extra at a flexible time through “click work”, i.e. simple commissioned work on the Internet, be it the desire for self-realization or altruism.
Making this heterogeneous group subject to social security contributions from the first euro they earn would probably mean that many of these people would forgo the part-time job in the future. Lost added value and an even greater shortage of workers would be the result. Apart from that, a ban on mini-jobs would also boost undeclared work.
It’s true: Germany’s low-wage sector is one of the largest in Europe. For the economically strongest country on the continent, this is – to put it in the jargon of the associations – an indictment. But even from this circumstance they draw a conclusion that conceals rather than fights the causes.
No sooner had the minimum wage been raised to 12 euros in October than the demand for another increase by law was on the table – with the support of a number of traffic light politicians. In view of the inflation, some parties will probably go into the 2025 election campaign with demands of 15 euros on their posters.
It would be better if they thought about clever reforms. Because more and more increases by the legislature will not solve the fundamental problem. The crux is that so many people are dependent on a second job because the taxes and duties in their main job are so high. More net from gross sounds trite?
Instead of tying up what feels like the seventeenth relief package and raising the minimum wage further with the same taxes, a reform at this point would definitely be appropriate. In view of the expected tax revenue of a record amount of 877 billion euros anyway.