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It is not bureaucracy that helps us, instead we need agreements on the ground in the companies and flexibility.
Employer President Dulger in an interview with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung "Bureaucratic actionism": Home office rule angers employers
Osnabrück , 28 January 2021.
Employers give the new rules on working from home little chance of success. Employer President Rainer Dulger told our editorial team: "The German government's home office regulation is another example of bureaucratic actionism that won't achieve much. Things don't get any better when politics gets involved.
The wording of the new "SARS-CoV-2 Occupational Health and Safety Ordinance" states: "In the case of office work or comparable activities, the employer must offer employees the opportunity to carry out these activities at their home if there are no compelling operational reasons to the contrary". The Federal Ministry of Labour speaks of an "obligation" and emphasises that the regulation, which is limited until mid-March, is intended to ensure that home office cannot simply be refused arbitrarily.
Dulger criticizes the government's intervention and stresses that it is rather the task of companies and employees to think about how to implement mobile forms of work. "I would have found it more sensible if the voice of the social partners had been listened to." Together with Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, DGB leader Reiner Hoffmann and he had appealed to employers to allow home office wherever it was practicable, he said. In addition, they had urged employees to accept this offer. That was the right way to go.
"Who keeps the shop running"
"Everyone who can do home office is already doing it in very, very many companies," Dulger continued. "That there are black sheep, we know that. That's why we made the appeal." Incidentally, there are also many employees who cannot simply go into the home office because the work routine simply does not allow it. These employees thus contribute to "keeping the shop running".
According to the president of the employers' association, there is no need for a compulsory home office even after the expiry of the Occupational Health and Safety Ordinance in March. Dulger: "It is good that the Federal Minister of Labour, Hubertus Heil, has failed with these plans due to the opposition of the CDU/CSU in the Bundestag. It is not bureaucracy that helps us, instead we need agreements on the ground in the companies and flexibility."
