Showing posts with label Uwe Witt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Uwe Witt. Show all posts

Saturday, March 6, 2021

Uwe Witt, February 26, 2021, Solo Self-employed Support

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/213, pp. 26852-26853.

Right honorable Herr President. Esteemed colleagues. Dear viewers.

Herr President, permit me to go somewhat further back so as to better understand the relationship. – As I was writing this speech, I needed to consider why for long all draft laws and statutory amendments which we had brought into this sovereign house were rejected by you by mutual agreement,

            Stefan Schmidt (Greens): Because they were bad!

and why this again now will occur with the submitted motion; whereby the impression is manifested: It is you who deeply divide our society and allow to again revive the political trench wars as they normally occurred in Germany a hundred years ago. It is you who are not in a position to accept a really divergent opinion. All which does not correspond to your way of thinking is evil and ought to be forbidden.

This then goes so far that leftist storm troopers by the name of “Antifa” fell upon an election stand this past Saturday in Baden-Württemberg and with 20 persons bludgeoned into the hospital a State legislature candidate of our party.

            Matthias Zimmer (CDU/CSU): Theme!

Thus, the chief of the Federal Constitution Defense will be changed, or elections of Minister-presidents will be repeated, because the results do not suit you.

            Kai Whittaker (CSU/CSU): Herr President!

           Matthias Zimmer (CDU/CSU): Herr President! What has this to do with                               the theme?

All of which leaves behind a stale after-taste and casts a dubious light on your understanding of democracy.

Whereby we are again at the theme. We of the Alternative had already demanded at the beginning of the first lockdown measures in 2020 assistance programs for the solo self-employed, those without shelter and other groups of persons. Yet how do you come to terms with our policy? Not at all! To the members of the CDU/CSU who just now cried out so indignantly: Since you, in the scope of a generally leftward political wandering, have turned away from your hereditary positions, must you now, ja, stigmatize as extreme right the political values for which you yourselves have not stood for 20 years.

All of you reject each of our motions and in that regard spread unbelievably fake news.

            Matthias Zimmer (CDU/CSU): Theme!

The AfD ensures the spread of Corona; the AfD ensures the neglect of women’s rights;

            Matthias Zimmer (CDU/CSU): Herr President! What then is the theme?

the AfD is responsible for Judenhass in Germany; and the AfD is naturally responsible for the murder of Walter Lübcke. Ladies and gentlemen, you are here carrying authentic, open opinion and democracy to the grave. I therefore appeal to you in the name of the fathers of our Basic Law: Permit other opinions,

            Sven Lehmann (Greens): Rightist extremism is not an opinion!

come to terms with our good ideas, and do not categorically reject these solely because these are from the AfD.

I therefore hope that you stop with your legal motions and ostensible assistance measures, fatal for the people, which in the lockdown measures ordered by you are merely placebos at the cost of our people. You harm not only our solo self-employed, artists, small- and mid-sized retailers, service providers, hotel and restaurant operations. No, you permanently and persistently annihilate millions of workplaces, millions of livelihoods, the dreams of hundreds of thousands of people of a bit of happiness and freedom in prosperity.

Particularly the solo self-employed whom you drive to ruin by means of a permanent work ban, leaving them to starve with empty promises to out-stretched arms. And I unfortunately do not mean that only picturesquely. The hitherto – as you name it – assistance programs are anything but authentic help for the solo self-employed. The final effect is that the government disgraces itself with the November, December, January, February, March assistance when this in fact is not received by those affected. The “Bild” newspaper last Saturday reported on a cook here in Berlin who received a December assistance in the sum of, believe it or not, 6 euros.

Our motion [Drucksache 19/26901], “Support for the Solo Self-employed – Help which Arrives”, includes precisely that which this government has neglected for a year: A direct aid for the self-employed who for a year have been undeservedly damned to inactivity by this government, and referred to the alms of jobs centers so as to preserve themselves and their families from starvation. In the year 2020 alone, almost 100,000 solo self-employed needed to apply for Hartz-IV.

I speak here of men who throughout their lives could take care of themselves by means of the work of their own hands and were never directed to public feeding, men who with work and diligence could feed their families, men who by means of their taxes have made a contribution to the social state. Now these men stand before the final exit of their livelihoods.

The regulations contained in your Social Support Packet III in no way lead to an improvement in the situation of these men. Instead, you prepare the way to a permanent stay in the basic security and thereby to long-term unemployment. If the definition of benefits [Leistungen] is for once looked at, one is immediately struck by the paradox of your Social Support Packet. It says “basic security for those seeking work”, not “basic security for the solo self-employed”, whose work you have forbidden by means of senseless Corona preventive measures.

The solo self-employed require direct aid so as to be able to secure their subsistence, and not simplified access to a system which, once caught in its clutches, no one again gets quickly free.

I thank you for your attention.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, November 9, 2020

Uwe Witt, October 29, 2020, Home Office

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/186, pp. 23508-23509.

Right honorable Frau President. Worthy colleagues. Dear viewers at the TV sets.

The colleagues of the FDP lay before us a motion in which they want to take into ready account the development in the labor market. Their assertion, “Digitalization is not only one of the most important drivers of growth of the present economic development, but also an engine of social transformation and change in the world of work”, nevertheless indicates a striking mis-estimate of the situation. Since the holy cow of “digitalization” has some by-products which for the labor market are unfortunately extremely toxic. I know that the FDP wishes to especially distinguish itself here. But like everything in life, digitalization also has two sides; namely, light and shadow.

The light, in this case the possibility of a home office, gave many people during the first lockdown the opportunity to work. There is here – I concur with the FDP – a need to expand and to adapt legal regulations. The shadow cast by digitalization is nevertheless significantly greater than the just mentioned light. Digitalization transforms. However, the small office expert in the large organization will be transformed not into an IT skilled worker but into one of the unemployed.

As stated in a study by the ING-DiBa, there are in Germany about 3.5 million office workers and assistants in related occupations; around 3 million of these workplaces are in the mid-term endangered by advancing digitalization. The study sees similar developments in other occupational fields. In regards the total 30 million social insurance obligated and marginal employees, the authors of the study expect just over 18 million of the studied workplaces in Germany to be in danger. That is 59 percent of the German labor market which is endangered, mid- and long-term.

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): There are any number of studies!

If I am directly concerned with the results of studies: – I do not know whether you know this, Herr Birkwald – The consulting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers has reported that for Great Britain the home office could be the origin of a total economic damage to the sum of 16.7 billion euros. For when workers increasingly work in a home office, that has effects upon the value creation chain and the corresponding eco-system of a business in the offices of the larger firms. That pertains to the restaurant trade for which the workers so far primarily have been supplied at mid-day, those in retail trade, transport businesses as well as gas stations for commuters, facility management, etc., etc.

As you in your motion correctly state, the Corona crisis has contributed to the acceleration of digitalization. Yet no beautiful, new world of work arises, as your motion suggests, but a scenario which has unintended consequences for the labor market and society in general and for the individual employee and his family circumstances in particular.

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): Thus back to tablet and stylus?

            Beate Müller-Gemmeke (Greens): The AfD wants to advance tele-work.

The mixing of work and private life – something, besides, which over 50 percent of home office workers evaluate negatively – is a problem. Which you in your motion regard through rose-red spectacles. Clearly, it might appear to be sensible or a relief for one or other workers to be able to take care of family and children during the day – but at what price?

In reality, the everyday still appears thus: 6 o’clock in the morning call up the e-mail, then get the kids to day-care or school, two or three hours on the laptop, prepare lunch, pick up the kids, attend to the household chores, meanwhile yet again the laptop to clear up the work, get the kids ready for bed and until late at night finish up the work for the firm – in my eyes, no family-friendly perspective.

I come to an end, Frau President. – For that, you, dear FDP, wish to weaken working hours guidelines and in place of a daily maximum work time fix an identical weekly maximum work time. You thereby open the doors to a 24/7, round-the-clock, constant availability. Your motion is in need of being discussed in committee with the expected draft law from the House of Hubertus Heil, the draft  for the mobile work law, so as to be brought into harmony with labor protection and labor protection regulations.

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

           

 

 

Thursday, August 6, 2020

Uwe Witt, August 6, 2020, Part-time Pay Extension


Uwe Witt
Part-time Pay Extension
AfD Kompakt, August 6, 2020

[Uwe Witt is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen. He is a human resources manager. Marcus Söder (CSU) is minister-president of Bavaria.]

Corona in the meantime is acting as a fire accelerator and a fulfillment aid for the left-green, ideological re-structuring of the German economy. Not only have the government’s measures for containing the Corona virus forced the German economy to its knees; no, now the wonder medicine of part-time pay also operates to the detriment of the labor market. Since as long as a firm operates on part-time, there is an automatic hiring freeze. This development will continue if the government, as demanded by Marcus Söder, extends the part-time pay regulations far into next year. After expiration of the special regulations at the end of the year, of the present 6.9 million part-time workers at most half may return to their regular, full-time workplaces. Economists are therefore figuring on unemployment numbers of over five million in Germany. The extension of part-time work only serves to prettify the unemployment statistics. You obviously only want to drag out the problem of a menacing mass unemployment until after the next federal election. End the headless course of the Corona crisis management and again give people prospects of returning to their old workplaces at a pre-Corona level.


[trans: tem]