Linke on work and social affairs

The Left wants to replace Bürgergeld (citizen's income) with an individual minimum income without sanctions, pegged to the at-risk-of-poverty line of currently about 1,400 euros a month. In the platform's view, poverty and unemployment mostly have structural causes and are not people's own fault.

The Left wants to change the basic welfare payment. Each person would get a minimum income. There would be no cuts as punishment. It would be about 1,400 euros a month. Rent is already included in that.

Everyone whose income or assets are insufficient would be eligible. The roughly 1,400 euros include rent and other housing costs; where rents are high, the amount would be higher. The platform cites the welfare association Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband, which considers a standard rate of at least 813 euros necessary. A minimum wage of 15 euros, rising to 16 euros by 2026 at the latest, and lower taxes on small incomes are meant to ensure that work pays.

The Left advocates shorter working weeks at full pay, such as 32 hours or a four-day week. Parents would be protected from dismissal until their child's sixth birthday. This is meant above all to help single parents combine work and family.

The Left wants shorter working hours for the same pay. For example, four days of work per week. Parents of small children should be harder to fire. The protection would last until the child is six.

With shorter hours, pay would stay the same and extra staff would be hired. This would come with more flexible childcare and options to work from home. Employees should have more say over their own time, rather than flexibility serving only the employer. People returning from parental leave would have a right to the same or an equivalent job.

The Left wants to ban age discrimination in the Basic Law and give older people a legal right to elder assistance. It also plans age-appropriate housing and a free nationwide transit ticket for seniors. The goal is self-determined aging without poverty or disadvantage.

The Left wants to protect older people better. Nobody should be treated worse because of age. This would be in the constitution. There would be more homes without barriers. Older people would ride buses and trains for free.

Senior representative bodies would be set up in all municipalities. Services would be available both digitally and offline at no extra charge. Municipal and cooperative housing companies would get priority public funding for age-appropriate conversions. The plan includes a quota for accessible housing, a ban on evicting older people, and housing swap exchanges with rent caps. Assisted living for seniors would become part of social housing.

The Left wants to raise the statutory minimum wage to 16 euros by 2026 at the latest and tie it to the median wage. It cites the EU minimum wage directive, which names 60 percent of median income as a benchmark.

The minimum wage is the lowest pay allowed. The Left wants to raise it to 16 euros an hour. That should apply by 2026 at the latest. After that it should rise every year. It should apply to everyone, with no exceptions.

The minimum wage would track the median wage and rise each year by at least the inflation rate. The Minimum Wage Commission would no longer be able to decide against the union representatives. Exceptions would end, for example for minors without vocational training, the long-term unemployed and workers in sheltered workshops for people with disabilities. Checks on minimum wage and working hours would become more frequent, customs staff fighting wage fraud would double, and penalties would rise.

The Left wants more workers to be covered by collective agreements. Public contracts would go only to companies that comply with such agreements, and it would become easier to make agreements binding for entire industries.

A collective agreement sets pay and working hours for many workers. The Left wants more people to have one. The government should give contracts only to companies that follow collective agreements. It should be easier to make an agreement apply to a whole industry.

The federal government is to present an action plan for greater bargaining coverage. Labor ministries would be able to declare collective agreements generally binding even without employer consent. Agreements would continue to apply after outsourcing and company splits, and trade guilds would be required to conclude collective agreements. Compliance would also apply to subcontractors. When the contractor for a public service contract changes, workers would be taken on under at least the same conditions.

The Left wants to ban temporary agency work and abolish fixed-term contracts without objective justification to give workers more security. Minijobs and Midijobs (low-hours jobs with reduced social contributions) would be replaced by jobs with full social insurance.

The Left wants secure jobs. Temp agency work should be banned. Contracts should no longer be time-limited without a reason. Minijobs should also end. Every job should be fully insured for sickness, retirement and unemployment.

Valid grounds for fixed-term contracts would be narrowed; the third contract with the same employer must be permanent. Until the ban, agency workers would get equal pay from day one plus a ten percent bonus. Social insurance would apply from the first euro earned, including for foreign seasonal workers; for solo self-employed people, clients would pay contributions and observe minimum fees. Where sham contracts for work are suspected, the burden of proof would lie with the companies. Foreign workers' residence rights would no longer depend on their employment contract.

The Left wants shorter working hours with full pay, for example as a four-day week, and wants to lower the legal weekly maximum to 40 hours. The statutory vacation entitlement would rise to six weeks.

The Left wants people to work less and earn the same. One example is the four-day week. No one should have to work more than 40 hours a week. Everyone should get six weeks of vacation a year. Twice in their working life, people should be able to take a year off.

The eight-hour day would remain the upper limit, with at least eleven hours of rest between shifts and fewer exceptions. Workers could take a sabbatical year with a right to return twice in their career. Also planned are legal rights to a full-time position, to family-friendly shifts and to temporarily reduced hours. Workplace protection against overload would be tightened, with more staff at the authorities and higher fines. A training levy would make companies that do not train apprentices share the costs.

The Left wants to give works councils and staff councils an enforceable right of co-determination on key company decisions. In companies with 500 or more employees, workers and shareholders would have equal representation on the supervisory board.

The Left wants workers to have more say in their company. The works council should help decide important questions. For example, when a plant is supposed to close. In larger companies, workers should get half the seats on the supervisory board.

The enforceable right would apply to closures, relocations, investments, environmental and climate issues, staffing levels, further training and health protection. Equal representation on supervisory boards would cover both private and public companies. Workers would also get time each week to discuss their working conditions with one another.

The Left wants every workplace to have a works council. Elections are to become easier, and anyone obstructing them is to be prosecuted more strictly. Work organized through digital platforms is to count as regular employment by default.

The Left wants a works council in every workplace. A works council speaks for the workers. Electing one should be easier. People who block an election should be punished. People who work through an online platform should count as employees.

Employees who start a first works council election are to get better legal protection. Prosecutors are to be able to investigate on their own initiative when elections or council work are obstructed. Unions are to get reliable access to workplaces, including digitally. For platform work, an employment relationship is to be presumed unless the opposite is proven under strict criteria. Unions are also to be able to sue for compliance with collective agreements, and employer associations would no longer be allowed to offer memberships without collective bargaining coverage.

The Left wants to abolish the special labor law that applies to churches and their welfare organizations. The right to strike is to cover church employees and civil servants as well, and political strikes are to be allowed. The Tarifeinheitsgesetz (collective bargaining unity act) is to be repealed.

Churches have their own rules for their workers. The Left wants to end these special rules. Civil servants and church workers should be allowed to strike. Strikes for political goals should be allowed too.

The demand also covers church-run organizations such as Diakonie and Caritas and is raised together with the unions. Co-determination in public and church institutions is to be aligned with the Works Constitution Act. Strikes are to be permitted for political and social causes as well. The Tarifeinheitsgesetz, under which only the largest union's agreement applies in a workplace, is to be scrapped.

The Left wants to require companies to train their employees and to set up sector-wide funds for this. Employees are to be able to cut their hours for training while keeping most of their pay. People who lose their job or change sectors are to receive a training allowance of 90 percent.

Companies should train their workers. All companies in a sector pay into one fund for this. People in training may work fewer hours. They still get most of their pay. People who lose their job get 90 percent of their last pay during training.

During reduced hours, at least 70 percent of pay is to continue; in the low-wage sector the state tops this up to 100 percent. These periods are to count more favorably for unemployment benefit and pensions. The 90 percent training allowance is not to reduce entitlement to unemployment benefit and is to be paid partly by the employment agency and partly by the company fund. For workers whose jobs disappear because of the economic restructuring, transfer companies are planned to place them in suitable work or training. In addition, one week of educational leave is to apply in all states, and companies must inform staff about it every year.

The Left wants to raise unemployment benefit to 68 percent and pay it for longer. More people are to gain access to unemployment insurance, and benefit suspension periods are to be dropped.

The Left wants to pay more unemployment benefit. It should be 68 percent. People should get it for longer. More people should qualify. There should be no more suspension periods. In a suspension period, people get no money.

Access is to be eased through longer reference periods and shorter qualifying periods, meaning lower requirements for prior employment. Unemployment benefit today is generally 60 percent of the last net wage, or 67 percent with a child. As its reason, the program says nobody should be shut out of working life against their will.

The Left wants to introduce an enforceable right to paid work. Publicly funded jobs are to be created for people who are permanently shut out of the regular labor market. Unemployed people are to get a legal entitlement to training.

The Left wants a right to work. People should be able to claim this right in court. The state should fund extra jobs. They are for people who cannot find work for a long time. Unemployed people should have a right to training.

The program calls the publicly funded employment sector a social labor market. The right to work is to include the right to turn down a specific job. Unemployment is also to be reduced through state employment and training programs. According to the program, the planned investment in public services and in the transport and energy transition will create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The Left wants to move vacant commercial space such as shopping malls into municipal or cooperative ownership and set up care centers there. These are meant to ease the burden of caregiving and daily life; the platform speaks of socializing care work.

Many department stores are empty. The Left wants to give them to towns or cooperatives. Care centers should open there. The centers help people who care for relatives, for example.

The centers would support family caregivers and offer easy-to-reach services such as health and education counseling and help with paperwork. Meeting places where nobody has to buy anything would also be created. Urban development funding would follow the goal of an accessible, inclusive city under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Federal rules would let planners set aside more space for club culture, among other things.

The Left wants to require companies to fill six percent of their jobs with people with disabilities, with no option to buy their way out. The minimum wage should apply in sheltered workshops. The party notes that unemployment in this group is twice the overall rate.

Companies should hire more people with disabilities. Six out of a hundred jobs should be for them. Companies should not be able to pay to avoid this. Workshops should pay the minimum wage.

The mandatory quota would go back up to six percent. Inclusion companies would get more public funding because, in the party's view, they do much to integrate people into the regular labor market. On the minimum wage in workshops, the platform cites the European minimum wage directive, which it says Germany should implement at once.