The Industrial Union Construction, Agricultural and Environmental (IG BAU)-Germany today called for an increase on workers' COVID-19 short-time work allowances. In a petition, the union called on its members to take action and put pressure on the federal government to provide 90 percent short-time allowances as one of many measures to protect the workers's health, safety and livelihood from the global health crisis.
Carsten Burckhardt, IGBAU Board member states: “A lot of good things are being done right in the federal and state governments to cope with the corona pandemic. But in terms of short-time work allowance, we appeal to the government to increase it. The current short-time working allowance of 60 and 67 percent of the net must not lead to millions of workers in our country being financially on the brink of abyss. It is grossly unjust that the Federal Employment Agency (BA) is going to fully reimburse employers’ social security contributions, but workers do not get anything. As trade unionists, we demand that workers be protected just the same as companies.”
Here is the link to the petition.
https://igbau.de/Binaries/Binary13708/2020-03-22-Petition-KUG.pdf.