The Greens in Germany have demanded that Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (Social Democrats) give women in particular the right to work from home. “Working from home is particularly important for women in order to reconcile family and career,” said labor market politician Beate Müller-Gemmeke (Greens) to the “Tagesspiegel” in Berlin. It’s about time sovereignty and when you work, how long and where.
The background to this is a debate about the return from the home office to the office at companies such as SAP or Deutsche Bank. The coalition agreement already stipulates that employees should have the right to work from home in future. However, this depends on the respective profession. This goal has not yet been implemented.
Labor Minister Heil has so far only presented initial non-binding recommendations on occupational health and safety for hybrid VDU work. This is not enough for the Greens. The party is therefore calling for further protection of the right to work from home.
There has also been criticism from the trade unions. Daniel Gimpel, trade union secretary at Verdi, regrets that the project has been shelved: “The fundamental aim in future must be to enable self-determined mobile working from home.”
Even though I agree that it predominantly affects women who have to reconcile work and family, why do we need to exclude men from it? I stayed with our son for over one year when he was between 2 months and 1 year and 4 months. I’m the one working from home and taking care of him here especially when he can’t go to the day care. It’s me who is shifting most of the work to afternoon and evening. And I’m his dad, I’m also stressed that one day some people will not be OK with me doing it, even though I deliver everything on time.
But anyway, this is all hypothetical because I live in South Korea where all of this is even more extreme. But who knows, perhaps some day we will move back to Germany.
Gonna post this as a reply here so I won’t have to copy this 3 times. Also tagging ValiantDust@feddit.org 0x815@feddit.org Enkrod@feddit.org so they see this as well
The original article by the tagespiegel uses language that makes it explicit this is supposed to include men however their motivation for demanding this (equal) home office right is because women are disproportionally affected by the lack of a right to home office work. The marketscreener article has translated this quite badly imo.
@ValiantDust@feddit.org @0x815@feddit.org and @Enkrod@feddit.org won’t see your tags the way you posted it, so here.
As far as I know, men are not excluded (others may correct me if I am mistaken). The Greens may have said that exactly because women are more affected by this issue as you said, but I don’t think men are excluded from the right. This would also violate the equality principle imho (but I am not a lawyer, so take this with a pinch of salt).
The argument is that it’s especially important for women, but everyone should get it. German law will not see this implemented for only one gender. They are making the argument about women working from home for two reasons:
- Virtue Signaling to a base that is especially concerned with the systemic disadvantage for women. (In this case virtue signaling is not a bad thing, because it mobilizes voters)
- Because the governing coalition is centre-left the Greens are framing it in a way to sell it to the conservative opposition. For years the conservatives have been arguing about how we have too few kids in Germany and how it’s because women prioritize their career. So this is good framing to onboard some opposition votes in parliament.