Carsten Linnemann: “Life-Life balance” does not create prosperity

CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann has asked the citizens to show more commitment to maintain prosperity. “Our prosperity, our social security systems, but also the functionality of our country are based on the fact that we are productive,” Linnemann told the Editorial Network Germany (RND) on Sunday. Work-life balance is nothing reprehensible. “But sometimes you have the impression that it is no longer about work-life balance, but about life-life balance,” said the CDU politician.

The new government wants to strengthen productivity, such as the possibility of a so -called active pension or flexibility of weekly working hours. “The latter is particularly important for families with children or with family members in need of care – we have a gap,” said Linnemann. For young people, it is important: “It is important to do an apprenticeship and learn a profession. We have to get back to it: to work out something yourself.”

According to the coalition agreement between the Union and the SPD, a weekly maximum working time is to replace the eight-hour day. The German population is divided with regard to the flexibility of the weekly working hours after a survey by the IPSOS polling institute on Friday: 46 percent of the population are therefore for a weekly maximum working hours instead of the previously applicable daily.

The skepticism of many citizens compared to changes in working hours is no coincidence. Because her daily experience probably does not consistently correspond to Linnemann’s Life-Life impression. The total number of working hours in Germany is somewhat lower than in one or the other industrial country. But not least, these are effects like this: women in particular are part -time in this country. The current total number of workers has never been higher in the Federal Republic than today. The number of overtime is also huge: more than a billion annually, around half of them unpaid.