Berlin, 10 January 2021: Employer President Dr. Rainer Dulger in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgmeine Sonntagszeitung on the limits of home office, pandemic protection in the workplace and the outlook for the time after Corona - and warns against further restrictions:

Mr. Dulger, do employers not allow enough home offices?

Wherever home office is possible, companies have made it possible. It is often overlooked that manufacturing companies and also many services can only run if the employees are also on site in the companies. So we must not lapse into an elitist discussion on this subject that misses the reality. If I look at my own company, for example: There are people at the machines so that we can deliver our products. That is not possible in a home office.

The situation has changed. Currently, only about half as many employees are in home offices as in the spring. Why?

In the spring, many employees were rightly sent to the home office. No one had experience with the virus. And hygiene concepts had not been rolled out in the companies. That has changed. Today, I observe at least a trend among my employees who have an office job, that after a long phase at home, people like to come back to the company to see their colleagues again - only at a distance, but still.

Is there room for improvement in infection control at the workplace?

In recent months, we have achieved a great deal together with our employees to make work safe in Corona times. This included pandemic plans, a variety of home office and data protection regulations, and collective bargaining agreements. In our own company, we have done everything possible: for example, we have increased cleaning frequencies, introduced one-way systems, and closed the canteen since February. So far, we have had no traceable infections in the workplace, and the infection rate has been low in other respects as well.

People have to catch it somewhere. There are now calls to shut down all businesses for two weeks. At least then the lockdown would be over sooner.

That's absurd. You can't close down all the farms. The people must continue to be supplied and the country must be kept running. You are also driving businesses that are already on the brink into insolvency. If you have no revenue for two weeks, you are exacerbating the difficult economic situation we are in. We need to keep people in bread and work, protected from the pandemic, as best we can. Only with value creation can we keep our social systems alive, which are taking care of everyone at the moment.

In December you were still against a store closure, your predecessor already found the lax November lockdown too harsh. Do the employers bear a share of the responsibility for the high infection figures?

When I look at the overcrowded ski slopes in some parts of Germany and at the same time the retail trade and the many catering establishments are closed, I realise: there is obviously a disproportion. At petrol stations and in supermarkets, you can enter the shop with a mask and a certain number of people and pay at a distance at the checkout. Why can't that be done in the same way in retail? Politicians are in danger of losing people over this ambivalence. Our position was and is: the restrictive measures should be relaxed as quickly as possible, but with intelligent hygiene and protection concepts.

Do you think the new tightening of the lockdown is right?

In principle, yes. But the individual measures must, of course, always be reassessed. It is now time to look ahead and talk to politicians about the post-Corona era. We need to learn from our experiences. At the moment, we are seeing how the Federal Chancellery, with 16 prime ministers and a few virologists, is only ever talking about the next two or three weeks. We must, however, talk about how things are going to progress over the next few months, taking due account of the views of practitioners in the factories. That is why politicians must take concerted action to involve the social partners in the question: What happens in March, April, into August?

Questions also remain about the post-pandemic period.

These are the crucial ones! Instead of always driving by sight, we need a long-term post-Corona strategy. We have a challenge that is perhaps greater than the one after reunification - now even with a global dimension. There was a comprehensive reform process with a clear thrust then, and that would be appropriate now too. After all, the money we are currently losing has to be made again. That is why we need not just a moratorium on burdens, but an unleashing offensive. Politicians must not keep making new demands on us employers.

During the crisis, companies have been calling for help from the state. Will it simply withdraw again afterwards?

The aid packages were good and important. But they will disappear again when we return to normal life. Then the money will have to be paid back - by the companies to the state, but also by the state to its lenders. That only works if the economy is humming properly. That's why we also urgently need to push ahead with digitalisation. We saw how important that is during the crisis.

Everyone is talking about digitalization. What does that mean in concrete terms?

I am sitting in the Odenwald right now and have to talk to you on the phone because the Internet line is not sufficient for a video conference. In the future, it must also be possible to work on the move or maintain an industrial operation in rural regions. It is always the same in Germany: In theoretical knowledge we are giants, in practical action we are dwarfs. When it comes to the digital infrastructure, things are slowly moving in the right direction when I see that fiber optic cables are being buried everywhere around here. That's how it has to be with other issues, too.

Digitalisation is not yet finished with the cables.

Of course not! The megatopic of digitisation is so multifaceted: digitisation is a flexibility topic, a competition topic, an education topic, a start-up topic, in other words, above all, a social topic. Take education alone: Here we need digital high-speed instead of cultural bureaucracy. This is where our future will be decided, this is where we are competing with other industrial nations. Businesses also need to develop digital solutions for their customers at breakneck speed. Think of self-driving or electrically powered cars.

However, German carmakers were not at the forefront of this development.

No one is always at the top. The important thing is that we're up there. I'm not worried about that at all. A large proportion of the patent applications for self-driving functions come from Germany. But for that to happen, the framework conditions have to be right, so that the factories for the car of the future are also located in Germany.

The most spectacular work is built by an American.

So what? We need to move away from national perceptions. German companies have built hundreds of factories in China, and I don't remember the Chinese being uncomfortable with that. Just look who owns a large part of Mercedes or Siemens. We live in a globalized world, national go-it-alone has had its day. The main thing is that the factories are here in Germany and the jobs of tomorrow are created in Germany. And for that to happen, the framework conditions have to be right, and not just in terms of infrastructure.

What is it?

We must create the future now! Agenda 2020 was yesterday. This includes, above all, not continuing to ignore demography or our spending on social welfare. We must cap non-wage labour costs at 40 per cent, preferably in a law with constitutional status. Otherwise, the social costs will grow over our heads, and that will weaken Germany as a business location.

Many health insurance companies have just increased their premiums. How do you intend to counteract this?

Wages and salaries are also rising, and the number of people in employment is almost as high as it has ever been. We do not have a problem with revenue, but with expenditure.

Saving on health is not a popular topic after the pandemic.

Let's start with pensions, then. Take a look: I was born in 1964, which is the cohort with the highest birth rate - I belong to the baby boomer generation. So it's clear that in ten years at the latest there will be an imbalance between recipients and contributors, and that the pressure on our social security systems will become ever greater as a result of this demographic change. That is why the retirement age must be raised.

What age do you have in mind?

I cannot tell you that here and now. My generation has a responsibility to work longer where it can and where it is possible. We must raise the limit everywhere where people can and want to work longer. Of course, there are also professions in which they cannot work forever, that is clear.

So you want to make retirement more flexible?

Why not? We need to have this discussion honestly. There is no alternative but for the costs arising from the ageing of society to be spread across the generations - because this is the only way to maintain long-term confidence in the statutory pension.