During a conference held in Berlin on 29 November, a year and a half after sounding the starting gun to ‘national dialogue on the future of work in the digital age, the Minister for Labor and Social Affairs, Andrea Nahles presented the ‘White Book on Work 4.0’, which takes up the conclusions from this major consultation project and details its own set of solutions. The Social Democrat is proposing making the law on working time more flexible for a two-year trial period as a means of meeting both businesses’ and employees’ wishes for flexibility. However such derogations will need to be incorporated into collective agreements. The Minister also intends to boost lifelong training, and to this end intends to broaden the scope of the Employment Agencies’ competences, which will be tasked with advising all employees on which training programs to undertake. The Minister is currently putting the White Book forward for government approval.
Striking the right balance between company demands for flexibility and employees’ needs. 200 experts were consulted, 12,000 citizens participated, numerous workshops and themed conferences were hosted, and in excess of fifty viewpoints held by employers’ federations, unions, and other organizations were analyzed, some of which were incorporated into the 234 pages of Andrea Nahles’s White book. The Minister was said to have been impressed by the success of the national debate, which started in A
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