Götz
Frömming
Vocational
Training
German
Bundestag, June 27, 2019, Plenarprotokoll 19/107, pp. 13130-13131
[Götz Frömming is an
Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from Berlin. He is a teacher and
has worked a number of years in secondary schools in Berlin and
Baden-Württemberg, including the Schul Schloss Salem. He here responds to a
government proposal to reform vocational training law. IG Metall and the GEW
are German labor unions. Anja Karliczek is German Minister for Education and
Research and is a member of the CDU.]
Right honorable Frau Minister Karliczek, I do not know whether you
have recently employed a Handwerker
[tradesman, mechanic]. If so, you presumably waited a considerable length of
time for him. According to a business cycle report issued by the central union
of German trades, it takes on average ten weeks before the Handwerker arrives. Especially lengthy is the waiting time in the
construction industry. There you must wait up to 14 weeks. We thus urgently
require more Handwerker. Yet many training
positions remain unfilled. Instead, we produce legions of college drop-outs.
Almost every third student prematurely terminates his studies and leaves the university
without a degree. The economic costs are immense. We need more prepared Meister and fewer failed Master.
It is therefore profoundly welcome that the federal government and
specifically the federal education minister have announced a prioritization of
vocational training [berufliche
Ausbildung]. The title of the federal government’s present draft law
promises us a “modernization and strengthening of vocational training”. The actual
regulatory subject is the vocational training law, the legal basis for dual vocational
training. It has already been plainly stated that this can be regarded as a
quite important and proven legal instrument for the securing of our economic
welfare.
However, each intervention in this proven system must be well
founded. I wish to go into two especially noteworthy alterations which naturally
you have very positively presented but with which we have some problems. The
first is the introduction of a minimum allowance for trainees that at first
instance sounds terrific. Initially in the first year of training, this shall
be 515 euros and shall be gradually raised over the next three years to 620 euros
and shall be further increased; it has been plainly stated by you. In the
motions of the Linke and Greens this is naturally called too little. That is to
be expected.
Birke Bull-Bischoff
(Linke): It is indeed too little!
We will be able to discuss your motion more fully in committee.
Now, one could think that it is very nice of the federal
government to give more money to the trainees. Only, the thing has a catch: it
is not in fact the money of the federal government which shall be disposed of
but the money of the firms which the government disposes of in its management
of tax funds. It is not surprising that from the side of the employers – you have
presented even this as otherwise – a massive criticism of this regulation was
exerted. Thus, for example, Roland Ermer, president of the Saxon Handwerker conference spoke of a
leveraging of wage-scale autonomy. Especially in eastern Germany can a rigid
arrangement lead to the smaller firms no longer being able to perform
additional training. That would be of devastating effect. We can all one
another hope that it does not come to that.
Yet the employees also have in terms of their interests a problem
with a minimum allowance. They fear a deterioration in some branches. According
to present administrative determination [Rechtsprechung],
trainees at firms in the metal and electrical industries not adhering to wage
scales are in the first training year at 800 euros.
Yasmin Fahimi
(SPD): That remains so.
As a result of an allowance, it could here come to a reduction as
per a flexibility clause.
Yasmin Fahimi
(SPD): A fully false example!
Thus the foreseen new regulation for a minimum training allowance
is for Hans-Jürgen Urban, managing board member of IG Metall, as he himself has
stated, a scandal. Even the GEW concedes that the planned minimal allowance
benefits only a very small portion of trainees. The majority of our firms for
long have paid more. For once we should acknowledge that and not place industry
under general suspicion.
Yasmin Fahimi
(SPD): No one has done that besides yourselves.
In brief, the minimum allowance is not unproblematic and not
because, parallel to weakening pay scale arrangements, it shall be further
possible – and it now in fact is coming – to increase but also to reduce. That
you can look up: Drucksache 19/10815,
Seite 42f. That a minimal allowance can be exceeded, I understand. But why
should an undercutting be permitted?
…
Also in regard the second point which I wish to address, you have
instead of simplifying the thing instituted complications and created parallel structures. There shall be three new completion designations: certified
occupational specialist, bachelor professional, master professional. Ladies and
gentlemen, that not only sounds but also is presumptuous and silly. Yet at the
same time you do not wish to do away with the guaranteed Meister designation. The customer thus has the choice of whether he
wants to have the kaput sink repaired
by a Handwerkmeister or bachelor
professional. I ask myself whether there will be a price differential when the
academic repair service takes an order.
Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): I ask
myself whether it interests the customer when the sink functions again.
I wish in closing to address one serious point. W presently have
over 2 million young adults without vocational training who hereto simply fall
through the grating, and there will be ever more. Among them there are besides
especially many people of immigrant background. We must urgently take care that
those who remain here will be introduced to the vocational training system, if
only so that they do not become a long term burden on the general population.
Unfortunately, the federal government’s draft law deals too briefly with this
situation. You have an eye for the universities – the new titles betray that –
and want a kind of pseudo-academicization of vocational training. That is
superfluous; that, we do not need.
In place of this, put our motion, “Strengthen Vocational Training –
No One Left Behind”. Through the introduction of definable training sections, we
want to give a lift to these people who often have no or a very poor school
certification.
Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, in this matter, I think back
to a man who happened to be named Willi. He was a municipal worker in the
village where I grew up. He could perform only the simplest tasks, but he was
respected by all and he belonged there; since his work, when considered
correctly, was exactly as important as the work of the Bürgermeister in this
village.
I thank you.
René Röspel
(SPD): Are you now for or against the minimum training allowance?
[Translated by Todd Martin]
