A corresponding proposal from the finance and labor ministries and the labor market service (AMS) will be discussed and decided today in the AMS administrative board, Kocher said on Tuesday at a press conference in Vienna when asked by journalists. “It will pass on the short-time work with stricter examination.” The social partners were also involved in the extension of short-time work. It is “a good compromise,” said Kocher. Short-time work will only exist in very specific cases in the future.
The Corona short-time work model, which has been in effect since March 2020, was reformed in mid-2021, and there were two different models up until March 2022. On the one hand, there was an unchanged variant for companies that were particularly affected until the end of March 2022, and on the other hand, there was a transitional model with a reduced level of funding for companies until the end of June 2022. The current model, with employers sharing in the costs of 15 percent, is now to be extended until the end of the year.
The net replacement rate for employees on Corona short-time work has not changed since March 2020 and is 90 percent, 85 percent or 80 percent, depending on income level. The replacement rate should remain the same until the end of the year.
Most employees were on short-time work in April 2020, when over 1 million people received short-time work allowance. Around 53,000 people were pre-registered for short-time work at the beginning of the week. From March 2020 to the end of March 2022, government spending on short-time work due to the coronavirus amounted to EUR 9.56 billion. More recent figures are not yet available.
Source: Nachrichten
