SPD on work and social affairs

The SPD wants to keep implementing the state's skilled-labor strategy and tie young people, families and skilled workers to the state. This includes help with handing over businesses, stronger vocational training and more skills in dealing with artificial intelligence.

The state lacks skilled workers. The SPD wants more young people to stay in the state. It wants to strengthen job training. People who train as master craftsmen keep getting money. Businesses should find a successor more easily.

The state's advertising for skilled workers is to be pooled and coordinated with business. For business succession, advice and matching services are to stay; the SPD will examine a program in which experienced entrepreneurs mentor successors on a voluntary basis. A voluntary orientation year in the skilled trades is also under review. Vocational schools are to benefit from the education investment drive, with digital learning and partial qualifications added. Because of artificial intelligence, the skilled-labor concepts are to be revised together with the stakeholder groups.

The SPD wants to strengthen training and career changes and support employment agencies and job centers. For the long-term unemployed it calls for subsidized jobs with social insurance, and for people under 25 a statewide program modeled on one in Schwerin.

The SPD wants to get more people into work. People who have been jobless for a long time should get special job offers. Young people under 25 should get special help. Everyone should finish school or job training.

The subsidized jobs are meant as a bridge into regular work and are to be combined with training. The SPD expects the Federal Employment Agency to provide such offers, carried out together with municipalities, job centers and nonprofit providers. The "Jobmotor" program tested in Schwerin is to be extended to the whole state. The program sees work not only as income but also as taking part in society.

The SPD wants more collective bargaining coverage, better protection for setting up works councils and more co-determination. Public contracts are to stay tied to paying collectively agreed wages, and the party wants to defend the eight-hour day at the federal level.

The SPD wants good pay and secure jobs. More companies should pay union-agreed wages. Works councils should be better protected. A works council speaks for the workers in a company. The working day should stay at eight hours.

Precarious work, fixed-term contracts without a stated reason and wage dumping are to be pushed back further. The SPD wants to continue and expand the Zukunftsbündnis (alliance for the future) of companies, unions and the state. Workplace health programs are meant to reduce sick leave and stress. Workplace safety stays a priority in the social affairs ministry; the party will examine how to strengthen the supervisory authorities while cutting red tape.

The SPD wants to achieve at the federal level that all citizens pay into the social insurance systems. Everyone is to contribute according to their means, explicitly including members of the Bundestag and the state parliaments.

The SPD wants this: all people pay into social insurance. Those who have more pay more. This should apply to lawmakers too. Lawmakers are elected politicians in parliament.

The program argues that solidarity-based financing only works if everyone takes part. Contributions are to reflect each person's economic capacity. The aim is stable social security systems. This would have to be implemented through federal law.

The SPD wants older people to be able to stay in their homes and take part in social life, even when they need care. It also wants to counter loneliness in all age groups with meeting places and other measures.

Older people should be able to stay in their homes. They should keep taking part in life. Seniors with little money should get help and care too. The SPD also wants to fight loneliness. There are meeting places for everyone.

Help, care and assisted living are to be within reach for seniors with low incomes as well. An overall senior policy concept is meant to help municipalities improve the situation of older people in a targeted way. The SPD wants to examine how the goals of the care pact can be funded permanently and how municipalities can be supported with advice, networking and care-friendly neighborhoods. The state program for meeting places, known as Dritte Orte (third places), is to continue. At the federal level, the SPD is pushing for research on loneliness and a more open approach to it.

The SPD wants to make Mecklenburg-Vorpommern accessible in all areas of life and to update the action plan on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities together with those affected. More people with disabilities are to work in the regular labor market.

The SPD wants a state without barriers for people with disabilities. This covers transport, housing, health care and the internet. People with disabilities should have a say in the plans. More of them should work and train in regular companies.

The state contact office for accessibility at the Bürgerbeauftragter (citizens' ombudsman) is to be supported and expanded if needed. The action plan on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities will be extended with input from people with disabilities and their organizations. The SPD wants to examine whether an independent monitoring body could report publicly and regularly on progress. As many young people with disabilities as possible should complete in-company vocational training. Money from the Ausgleichsabgabe (a levy on employers who hire too few disabled workers) is to go more toward jobs in the regular labor market, and the Budget für Arbeit (a wage subsidy scheme) is to be promoted more.

The SPD wants to support new professional approaches in services for homeless people in the state. It names Housing First as an example, an approach in which people first receive a home of their own.

Some people have no home. The SPD wants to help them in new ways. One example is called Housing First. People get a home first. Other help comes after that.

The platform wants to take up current developments in services for homeless people. New professional concepts in the state are to be funded. Housing First is explicitly named as one such concept.

The SPD backs strong collective bargaining coverage at universities and wants a collective agreement for student employees. The obligation for Privatdozenten (habilitated lecturers without a professorship) to teach without pay is to be dropped.

The SPD wants good work at universities. Students with university jobs should get a collective agreement. Such an agreement sets pay and working conditions. Private lecturers should no longer have to teach without pay.

The federal rule on recording working time is to be implemented for university staff except professors. The SPD welcomes first agreements by the public-sector bargaining partners on student employees. The duty of unpaid teaching to keep the title under section 72(2) of the state higher education act is to be removed and replaced by a right to teach and examine. The designation "Affiliate Professor" is to be treated as equal to the title Privatdozent.

The SPD rejects any loosening of the minimum wage rules. It wants good working conditions for all employees in agriculture and the food industry, regardless of where they come from.

The SPD does not want to loosen the minimum wage. The minimum wage is the lowest pay a business may give. It should also apply on farms and in food companies. This should apply to all workers, no matter what country they come from.

The program makes this statement with regard to agriculture and the food industry. Good working conditions are to apply to all employees there. Where the workers come from is not supposed to matter.