FDP parliamentary group wants to reduce bureaucracy regarding the minimum wage

The FDP parliamentary group has submitted a motion to the Bundestag to reduce the bureaucracy of minimum wage documentation. The requirements for employers are to be reduced.

This article is part of the special topic Bureaucratic madness in the craft industry

The FDP parliamentary group wants to reduce the bureaucracy of minimum wage documentation and has therefore Application introduced into the Bundestag. Manfred Todtenhausen, the parliamentary group's spokesperson for skilled trades and crafts and a master electrician from Wuppertal, and Thomas L. Kemmerich, a skilled trades entrepreneur from Erfurt, were responsible for drafting the motion. "What annoys businesses most about the minimum wage is the extensive documentation requirement," explains Manfred Todtenhausen.

"This is especially true for small craft businesses, because they don't have their own HR department. They often have to process this additionally on weekends." The perceived criminalization and distrust they face from the government is counterproductive and deters many. "That was already the case with the advance payment of social security contributions, and it's the case again here. That's the end of the line."

Two-thirds of companies complain about bureaucratic burdens

According to the Minimum Wage Commission, a good 92 percent of employer audits in 2017 were conducted without any complaints regarding minimum wage records. On the other hand, two-thirds of companies complained about a significant bureaucratic burden. The FDP demands that this bureaucratic burden be reduced. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) is particularly critical of the

• the very short deadline for preparing the records and their scope.
• that many more industries and companies have to keep records for marginally employed people than for other part-time employees, and
• the threshold for record-keeping requirements, which is far from the minimum wage and does not even take into account the difference between part-time and full-time employees.

"The current minimum wage documentation goes way beyond the target," criticizes Todtenhausen. "With our proposal, we want to reduce the bureaucratic requirements for employers to a reasonable level. And yet, employees would still be just as well protected from illegal exploitation as before." The federal government is to present a draft law that

• the obligation is limited to the employees employed in the economic sectors or branches mentioned and to the recording of the duration of daily working hours,
• the recording period is extended to one month, whereby the monthly wage certificate with the total number of hours worked and the resulting monthly gross wage is sufficient as proof
• grants employees a three-month right of appeal in the event that the employer does not fulfil its documentation obligation, does not do so in a timely manner or does not fulfil it properly.

The FDP also calls for the threshold to be lowered to EUR 2.000 gross and for part-time workers whose hourly gross wage is two euros above the respective minimum wage to be exempt from the documentation requirement.