Bureaucracy: regulations and laws instead of personal responsibility

"The personal responsibility of companies is increasingly being replaced by guidelines, specifications, and laws," says Kurt Krautscheid, President of the Koblenz Chamber of Crafts. The master roofer is familiar with many – sometimes paradoxical – examples of bureaucracy.

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

"There are now regulations for every action," says Kurt Krautscheid, master roofer and president of the Chamber of Crafts Koblenz. As a typical example of bureaucracy, the head of the company cites "Krautscheid Roofing" the Supply Chain Act, which came into force in 2023 and was initially not intended to affect small and medium-sized enterprises: However, when processing orders, the documentation requirement would fall to the craft businesses that work as suppliers. "The trick in dealing with this law is to shift the due diligence obligations in the context of contract drafting onto small and medium-sized enterprises," emphasizes Krautscheid.

Or that Employment LawWhen implementing the EU directive on working time recording, Germany has chosen the path of maximum bureaucracy, explains the entrepreneur from Neustadt/Wied. "I know of craft businesses that rent additional space to store their paper files."

It is important to the entrepreneur and Chamber of Crafts president that discussions with federal, state, or local politicians focus on very concrete examples of bureaucracy so that these can be gradually unraveled. For example, he needs to implement a Job description for a pregnant woman for the trade inspection, "although I do not employ any pregnant workers on the construction site."

Another example is the Privacy Policy, Loud GDPR requires companies to assure customers that personal data will be deletedwhen the customer relationship ends. However, the tax office requires that tax-relevant documents be retained for ten years. This is a dilemma that companies can only resolve with considerable organizational and technical effort – if at all.

And so many issues would take on a life of their own, placing enormous strain on entrepreneurs and from their actual work on the construction site or in the workshop.

One bureaucratic requirement follows another

Another example is the Occupational safety. According to the trade association, roofers are generally no longer allowed to work from a ladder – only from scaffolding. "This leads to paradoxical situations during some repair work," explains the entrepreneur. "We are managing this and, of course, want to guarantee our employees the highest level of safety, but with the Documentation requirements about it and at the Training of employees, something needs to be cleaned up." More personal responsibility is needed here.

Even when Handling PU foam. Since August 2023, there has been a mandatory training requirement for handling PU construction foam"This must be repeated regularly," reports Krautscheid. Employers are now required to document this. "It's paradoxical that the PU foam can be purchased and applied at a hardware store – without any training and by untrained laypeople. Something's definitely not right."

This means that one bureaucratic requirement follows another, which the entrepreneurs have to deal with in the evenings or at weekends. Prepayment of social security contributions, which represents an enormous administrative burden for construction companies, or the Working Hours Act, which allows little flexibility and has abolished the valuable asset of trust-based working hours and replaced them with a documentation requirement. "It seems as if politicians are clinging to such rules. There's simply a lack of trust in entrepreneurship and practical relevance."

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