Martin Kocher sparked outrage with his proposal to cut social benefits for part-time workers. Shortly afterwards, the Secretary of Labor had to make a course correction.
The idea may have been good, but the execution went horribly wrong. Minister of Labor and Economy Martin Kocher of the ÖVP ran into problems with his proposal to reduce social benefits for part-time work and had to change course. He does not want to take anything away from mothers or women. These are of course “taboo”.
Kocher wants to get as many people as possible to work full time
Kocher’s concern is to get as many people as possible into full-time jobs. But part-time is a predominantly female phenomenon.
Eight out of ten part-time workers are women – or to put it another way: 50 percent of working women work part-time. For many experts, politics should start here. If you want to get women full-time, you need childcare nationwide.
Wifo: ‘Part-time work is not a livelihood’
Women who work part-time for many years receive significantly less pension. “Part-time work is not a livelihood,” says Wifo’s Christine Mayrhuber in an interview with “Krone”.
Austria is the leader in Europe when it comes to the pension gap. The second key next to the care offer is flexible working hours, such as flextime models. Women have the problem that they usually have to pick up their children somewhere on time.
AK expert Sybille Pirklbauer sees it the same way. Women need infrastructure to work full-time. “It’s not very intelligent to punish people for things they can’t help,” says Pirklbauer.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
