German
Bundestag, September 17, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/176, pp. 22081-22082.
Frau
President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
We
are now debating over sustainability in the world of labor and I would have a
couple of sustainability questions for those already long sitting here.
How
sustainable actually is it that we maintain one of the largest low-wage sectors
in Europe, even though we know that a lower wage leads to poverty in old age? We
today have 10 million employees who work full-time yet earn so little that they
in the end can build up no pension entitlement above the basic security? Work 45 long years, full-time, poverty in old
age – I do not believe that was your message to the voters. Yet poverty in old age
also means that we load enormous burdens onto future generations.
Coming
generations: The keyword brings me to education policy and to family policy.
The future belongs to those who understand, develop and master the new
technologies. What is the prerequisite for that? The students must be fit in
the natural sciences, competent in math, physics, biology, chemistry. How
sustainable actually is an education policy when our German Grundschul students in international
comparison, meanwhile falling far back in the natural sciences, lie behind Kazakhstan? How sustainable is a policy which apparently indicates that we are
no longer equal to the technological change of the future because our students
will not be up to it if we thusly continue? Besides that, it is no comfort that
we are scarcely better than the Serbs. We will not accept that.
…Germany
expends 200 billion euros per year on 150 family policy services, somewhere
lost in a thicket, 150 services which the government itself cannot enumerate. The
result of these services is: 68 percent of single parents are threatened with
poverty. Each child who will be born into a family increases the risk of poverty.
We have countless children drawing Hartz-IV. Children have become a luxury and,
under your accounting, we are stumbling into a demographic catastrophe.
Tomorrow
we will lack the skilled labor, tomorrow we will lack those who fund the
pensions. Ja, for that there is a new
magic term called “skilled labor immigration”. Yet I ask myself: How
sustainable actually is a skilled labor immigration in which, for 100
foreigners who arrive at a reasonable job, 50 foreigners immigrate into the Hartz-IV
system? How sustainable is such an immigration policy? How sustainable is an
immigration policy in which ultimately 40 percent of all Hartz-IV recipients
are foreigners? Who, please, in the long-term will finance that?
Peter Weiss (CDU/CSU – Emmendingen):
Is there actually a topic other than “foreigners”?
Beate Müller-Gemmeke (Greens): No,
there is no other topic!
We
now have, as a condition of your Corona measures, an enormous increase in
unemployment. 637,000 Corona unemployed, more will follow. All of you know
that. We even have an increase in unemployment in the occupations with
shortages, even in old age care, the number one occupation with shortages. Has
anyone for once had the idea to suspend the skilled labor immigration law or
allow the western Balkans regulation to expire, so that at a time in which our
people are going unemployed, no additional skilled labor will be recruited in
foreign countries? No, this idea comes to no one. You are looking at a future –
and we unfortunately with you – in which foreign skilled labor, in a time of
increasing unemployment, is competing in a labor market, although it is willing
to accept up to 1,500 euros per month less in pay.
Peter Weiss (CDU/CSU – Emmendingen):
Have you even once spoken with the management?
That
is namely the pay gap we meanwhile have between Germans and foreigners: 1,000
to 1,500 euros monthly.
I
come to conclusion. “Social sustainability” means the prohibition of present
undertakings which could not be desired by future generations. In the past 30
years, you have shown that with you, that is not the situation.
Vice-president Claudia Roth: Herr colleague, you are
clearly over. Would you please come to an end?
I
come to an end. – Yesterday, delegation chairman Ralph Brinkhaus clearly said: There
should now be a sustainability check for laws. Attention should be paid to what
that means for future generations. Hitherto, what have you actually done?
I am grateful for the attention. ‘Til then.
[trans: tem]
