Alexander Schweitzer (SPD) takes office as federal labour minister this Tuesday – and is already being confronted with demands from the Union before his swearing-in in the afternoon. The CDU Economic Council called on the former Rhineland-Palatinate SPD minister to change course at the ministry. “With this new appointment, we hope new political will to shape policy will come in,” secretary-general Wolfgang Steiger told the Augsburger Allgemeine, as tagesschau.de reported on Tuesday, 13 October. The change brought “the chance to bring new momentum into the recently deadlocked disputes over reform and social policy”.
Schweitzer takes over the ministry after the surprise resignation of Bärbel Bas (SPD), who was also co-chair of her party. After the death of her stepdaughter, she needed time to process her grief, she told her party colleagues; she could not muster the strength to carry out government and party work “to the full extent”. At the same time, she mentioned public attacks on her, “including from the ranks of the coalition partner, during this personally difficult time for me”, as Wirtschaftswoche wrote on Monday, 12 October.
Pensions, working hours, mini-jobs: the dispute lies in the ministry
Schweitzer’s new ministry covers two reforms where the SPD and the Union still have open points to clarify: pension reform and the working hours law. The CDU Economic Council urges the urgency of pension reform, and the same applies to a new working hours law, tagesschau.de reports. The Economic Council is pressing for a weekly maximum working time; the SPD-led ministry under Bas had tied that to companies being covered by collective agreements – for Steiger, a “new bureaucracy monster”.
According to tagesschau.de, there is disagreement not only over abolishing the early retirement pension without deductions after 45 contribution years, but also over how to handle mini-jobs and other issues. Above all, the CDU thinks it is taking too long for a draft law on the planned pension reform to be presented. Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) had to postpone the target for passing the pension reform in the Bundestag last week from the end of the year to spring. After Bas’s resignation, Merz once again stepped on the gas: the change at the labour ministry “should rather lead to an acceleration of the processes”. He hoped for swift passage of the government’s legislative plans.
Wirtschaftswoche recalls that the Union had been accumulating anger over Bas for months: the head of the parliamentary circle for small and medium-sized businesses, Christian von Stetten, had declared the minister “no longer tenable”, according to the paper. Now the successor is called upon to turn the pension commission’s 33 proposals into draft laws – and in doing so to placate the minister-presidents of both coalition partners, who do not want to give up the early retirement pension without deductions. Schweitzer himself had announced as SPD deputy that, with regard to pension reform, it was “completely clear that this reform must be discussed”; the proposals envisaged that people would receive less of what they had previously earned – “such proposals must not receive any support from the SPD”.
Pressure from all sides – and an appointment at the employers’ day
CSU leader Markus Söder stressed on ARD-Brennpunkt that time was pressing. “We must make decisions” – and that must not wait until the SPD party conference at the turn of the year. He directed clear expectations at Schweitzer: he must take over the agreements reached in the coalition and must not call them into question. On the so-called pension at 63, there must be no “general back to square one”, Söder said – but he conceded the possibility of hardship-case exceptions and transitional rules.
Saxony’s minister-president Michael Kretschmer expressed similar expectations: in the Leipziger Volkszeitung he demanded rapid reform steps. He called Schweitzer a valued colleague from the minister-presidents’ conference who now had important tasks ahead of him: “Especially on pensions, we need solutions that last in the long term and take account of the different employment biographies in Germany.”
Union parliamentary group leader Thorsten Frei sounded more conciliatory on tagesthemen. In the SPD and the Union, everyone knew that the goals set had not yet been achieved. “We must achieve significantly better results.” He was optimistic: there was no reason to assume that the tasks could not be successfully accomplished together as a coalition. “I am convinced that on pensions, as on other issues affecting the labour and social ministry, we will also reach a common solution.”
SPD secretary-general Tim Klüssendorf does not see cooperation with the CDU as endangered despite the attacks on Bas. “I do not see it as so damaged that we could not now close these construction sites that we have in common, together again,” he said on the joint ARD and ZDF morning magazine. On pensions, 30 of the 33 measures were uncontroversial. “In the end we will find an agreement on this, I am very sure of that and also confident.”
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil meanwhile tried to take the pressure out of the matter: “As agreed, we were on schedule for pension reform too,” he explained on Monday evening on ARD-Brennpunkt. There had been a coalition agreement to wait for the three state elections in September before presenting laws; there were also still substantive questions. Bas had not slowed the reform. The new labour minister wanted to get off to a quick start, and there was “no wobbling” on the reform coming.
For Chancellor Merz, the pressure is likely to increase this Tuesday: he is speaking at the employers’ day, and calls for change are loud from business. Employers’ president Rainer Dulger painted bleak future prospects in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung if the social systems were not reformed: “If the state of paralysis continues until the next election, possibly until 2029, that would be a political and economic catastrophe.” Dulger described the pension commission’s proposals as “internally coherent”; the end of the pension without deductions from 63 was long overdue. An appearance by Bas as labour minister had actually been planned at the employers’ day.
Editor’s note: Whether the Union translates its impatience into joint draft laws depends less on the new minister than on the coalition committee – and on the question of how much of the early retirement pension without deductions the SPD gives up. A quick start by Schweitzer would be a signal to Merz that the coalition is delivering again after Bas’s departure.
