SPD on work and social affairs

The SPD wants to create a state program for community work worth 10 million euros and secure it by law. It would let municipalities fund things like neighborhood help, flexible childcare and leisure activities, and decide for themselves what helps local families.

The SPD wants a new program for towns and villages. It should be worth 10 million euros. Towns can use it to pay for neighborhood help and leisure activities. Each place decides what its families need.

The program is meant to make municipal social and spatial planning permanent and shape it together with social service providers and residents. It should become easier for people to take part in this planning in their neighborhoods. The SPD also wants to extend the state program "Solidarisches Zusammenleben der Generationen" with an initiative for neighborhoods and rural areas facing high social strain and poverty risks. Municipalities are to be funded reliably overall, and the state family council is to be developed further.

The SPD wants to secure and better fund voluntary service programs such as the voluntary social, ecological, cultural and political year. All young people should be able to afford such a year, even without support from their parents.

Young people can do a voluntary year. For example in social work or protecting nature. The SPD wants everyone to be able to afford this. So volunteers should get more pocket money. It should be as high as the student aid called Bafög.

In the short term, pay in the "Thüringen Jahr" is to rise to the legal maximum, which the platform puts at 438 euros a month. Through the Bundesrat (the chamber of the states), the SPD wants the allowance for volunteers nationwide raised to the level of Bafög student aid. The platform argues that these programs give young people orientation and opportunities to get involved.

The SPD wants to strengthen social and educational work with older people in municipalities and permanently secure programs such as AGATHE against loneliness. Planning of services for the elderly is to become mandatory for municipalities through a new law on elder care structures.

The SPD wants more services for older people in towns. A program against loneliness should stay for good. Towns should have to plan help for older people. There should be a new law for this. Older people should be able to live at home for a long time.

The programs "Solidarisches Zusammenleben der Generationen" and AGATHE are to become a minimum standard for infrastructure that serves all generations. To that end, the SPD wants to revise the state law that secures family support funding. Together with municipalities, access to education, culture and community life is to be barrier-free and affordable, supported by digital services and in-person advice. Age-appropriate, barrier-free housing and alternative forms of living are to be expanded with funding programs. For nursing care, the SPD seeks a concerted effort by all parties involved, producing a catalog of measures.

The SPD wants to involve older people more closely in consultations and decisions that affect them and to expand the rights of the bodies that represent them. It also wants public transit to be geared to older people's needs and to improve protection against crime targeting seniors.

The SPD wants older people to have more of a say. Senior councils should get more rights. Buses and trains should work better for old people. The police should protect old people better from fraud and crime.

Thuringia's law on seniors' participation rights is to be revised on the basis of an evaluation report. The state seniors' council, local seniors' commissioners and seniors' advisory boards are to be strengthened, as is the representation of people needing care and their relatives. When expanding public transit, the SPD wants to take older people's needs into account and expand alternatives to owning a car, such as cycling, e-bikes and community buses. Counseling and police protection are to be stepped up in areas where seniors are especially at risk of crime. Public spaces are also to be made barrier-free, from sidewalks to street lighting.

The SPD wants to bring more people with disabilities into training and regular jobs with social insurance coverage. To do so, support services are to be expanded and a financial incentive for companies is to be examined.

People with disabilities should find a regular job more easily. The SPD wants more training places and more help at work. It is also looking at money benefits for companies that hire people with disabilities. The government itself should set an example.

The plan includes expanding personal assistance, supported employment and the integration service, plus a statewide network of inclusive companies. In addition to the Budget für Arbeit (a wage subsidy scheme), the SPD wants to examine an extra incentive system that relieves companies financially, directly or indirectly. The relief is to vary by type and degree of disability, possibly using a classification system like the one in disability sports. Vocational schools are to prepare everyone for the regular labor market, and the public sector is to lead by example.

The SPD wants to reform Thuringia's public procurement law so that public contracts go only to companies covered by collective wage agreements. This is to apply to municipal contracts as well. The party sees this as a contribution to aligning wages between eastern and western Germany.

The government gives contracts to companies. The SPD wants only companies with a collective wage agreement to get them. Such an agreement sets pay for many workers. The rule should also apply to cities and towns. This should help raise wages in the east.

The procurement reform is part of the goal of shaping working conditions through state law in the interest of employees. The SPD generally wants higher collective bargaining coverage and more workplace co-determination, and also sees this as a way to secure skilled workers. Together with the unions, it plans a campaign for more collective bargaining coverage in Thuringia. In the public sector, it wants to make state employment more attractive and give staff councils authority over all matters.

The SPD rejects longer store opening hours and more work on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. It justifies this with the protection of employees. Violations are to be met with penalties.

The SPD does not want longer opening hours for stores. It also does not want more work on weekends and holidays. This is meant to protect workers. Those who break the rules should be punished. The workplace safety agency should get more staff.

The party describes the protection of workers as an important concern. Those who do not comply with the rules are to face penalties. To this end, the state agency for occupational safety is to receive additional staff.

The SPD supports a chamber of labor as a counterpart to the business chambers IHK and HWK, provided the unions broadly agree. The chamber is to advise employees and represent their interests toward politics and administration. It is to be joined by an institute for worker-oriented research and a technology advice center.

The SPD wants a chamber for workers. A chamber speaks for the interests of a group. Businesses already have such chambers. The new chamber should advise workers. The unions should agree to it. A new institute should study working conditions.

The chamber is to offer work-related advice as well as further training and general education, and make employees' views more visible, for example in lawmaking. The technology advice center is to follow the model used in Rhineland-Palatinate. The planned institute is to study working conditions in Thuringia on a permanent basis. Building on this, monitoring of work, training and life in the state is planned. At the federal level, the SPD wants labor law that secures protection and co-determination for digital forms of work as well.

The SPD wants a skilled-worker drive to make social professions more attractive, including social work, health and nursing care, and childcare. Training is to be free of tuition fees, and nonprofit providers are to receive uniform, sufficient funding statewide. The platform calls these professions hard location factors because without them other people cannot go to work.

Social jobs include nursing and childcare. The SPD wants to win more people for these jobs. Training should not cost school fees. Internships should be paid. Social service providers should get enough money to pay union-level wages.

Plans include a re-entry program for qualified staff, practice-integrated training with collectively agreed pay in all SAGE professions, more places at state vocational schools and paid recognition internships. Career changers are to be able to train further while working. Nonprofit providers are to get planning security so they can pay wages comparable to the public sector; in return, their executives' salaries are to be disclosed. Grant rules are to be simplified and a separate digital bonus introduced for the social sector. The SPD also calls for a fair distribution of paid and unpaid care work.

The SPD wants to guarantee every young person an apprenticeship by law and fund this through a levy. It points out that young people are left without a place even though many positions stay vacant and fewer companies train apprentices.

Every young person should get an apprenticeship. The SPD wants to guarantee this by law. It is paid for with a levy. That means companies pay together into one pot. Training conditions should also get better.

According to the program, about 9 percent of applicants find no place while roughly 17 percent of positions stay open. Uniform statutory minimum standards are to improve training conditions. The SPD wants to examine whether a training fund makes sense for Thuringia. Such a fund would relieve small firms, create incentives to hire weaker applicants too, and pay for offers such as German courses, counseling and further training for instructors.

Together with the unions, the SPD is pushing for collective agreement coverage across the whole care sector. It also backs a four-day week for care workers, phased in gradually and later leading to 30 hours a week at full pay.

The SPD wants better working conditions in care. Union wage agreements should apply everywhere. Overtime should be paid better. Care workers should step by step work only four days a week. Their pay should stay the same.

The platform justifies the demands with what the party sees as years of poor working conditions in care. Overtime is to be paid at a consistently higher rate so that hiring extra staff becomes more worthwhile for providers and full-time jobs become more attractive. After care workers, other health professions are to get the shorter working week.