German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/9,
pp. 456-457.
Right honorable Frau President. Dear colleagues.
I find it to be crazily characteristic that you have full
ranks for the kindergarten theater of your sitting places, yet the business
friendly FDP and CDU/CSU parties, when this point in the daily order is past,
leave the hall in a flood. I would
really wish that your voters may see this: How important to you is your sitting
place and unimportant to you are the interests of business out there in our
country.
Dear colleagues, I myself am for 30 years in the retail
textile business. I know what is happening out there. I know how it feels. I
was twice sent into the lockdown with two days notice. Thus suddenly everything
which has been planned up to then is gone. You are no longer able to work with
your co-workers; they need be put on part-time with 60 percent net pay; and
that is in the area in which the minimum wage is paid. How that feels for
anyone who wants to properly pay his people, I cannot at all describe to you.
When, without any fault of your own, you need to close your business, then you
feel extremely helpless.
We are presently in December and this actually is the most
important month for us in this branch. And no, it is not about making big profits
but about being able to compensate for this year’s losses, storing up reserves
and the next year, and to be armed for what perhaps is yet to come. All of that
we can just forget.
Our co-workers shall be controlled by credentials and
vaccination certificates. We do not know whether they are thus authorized,
whether they are thus allowed, and what happens if they thereby make mistakes. Who
pays the penalties? Our co-workers need customers, those who they know for
decades and greet at the door and, if they do not fulfill the third “G” for
healthy [gesund], again send out. Our
customers are the basis, the foundation of the business and we need show the
door to these people. This is unbearable and has nothing to do with what
business must do out there.
Johannes Fechner (SPD): It functions very well!
The press headlines: Apocalyptic Situation for the
Merchants, Revenue Losses up to 80 Percent. – But the money is not gone; its
just that others have it. The great on-line providers are celebrating their
second strongest Christmas sales, the large supermarkets have just rearranged
their assortment, and all that the small retail merchant can no longer sell is
suddenly there for purchase. And it is no problem at all when 100 people stand
there according to the rules for the special offers. Yet the one who does not
fulfill the last G cannot stop at the small merchant of 100 square meters. They
can go to a tobacco store without fulfilling the 3G rule. They however cannot buy
a toy for their neighbor’s daughter; that is not possible. That is awfully sad,
that however is reality in our country.
When I let all of this pass in review, this pressure which
is certainly exerted upon the non-vaccinated, then I have the impression: It is
not really about health. It is about requiring the syringe for the non-vaccinated,
Julia Klöckner (CDU/CSU): It becomes ever more obscure.
and that on the backs of the retail merchants, the
restaurateurs and the other service operations. That is the reality which is
found out there and which we cannot accept.
Right honorable Herr Chancellor, a few days ago I could
still read that you are the Chancellor of the non-vaccinated. I would gladly
take you at your word: Stop the discrimination against the non-vaccinated. Stop
it so as to remove these people from the backs of the retail and restaurant
trades; since these areas for a year and a half have conducted themselves
reasonably, in exemplary fashion and with solidarity. Please comprehensively give
back to my colleagues their business freedoms and thereby put an end to the
irreparable destruction of a pillar of the German economy.
If this should not suffice for you, then please do it for
the millions of competent co-workers who fear for their jobs and their livelihood.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
