On Friday 30 November, the German Bundestag approved the bill tabled by Hubertus Heil (SPD), the minister for employment and social affairs, which seeks to bolster the continued training of employees whose positions are impacted by digital transformation (Qualifizierungsgesetz). Approval was granted by the votes of MPs from the country’s grand coalition, as well as those from the liberal and green parties. In order to improve continued training for workers in Germany, the law will significantly strengthen the public support mechanisms for training in companies, while the Federal Employment Agency will cover some or all of the training and salary costs, depending on the size of the company. For workers hired for short-term projects, the law will improve their access to unemployment insurance benefits. It will also decrease contributions for unemployment insurance; these will drop from 3% to 2.5% of gross salary as of 1 January 2019.
When addressing fellow deputies in the Bundestag, Hubertus Heil highlighted that some 1.3 million workers are to lose their jobs by 2025 due to the rise of automation and technological progress. He however added that around 2.1 million new jobs would be created over the same period. “Our task is to make sure the employees of today are able to take up the jobs of tomorrow,” the German labour minister said. The solution, therefore, would be to train those workers, so that a roofer can learn to ha
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