One in three youth in Berlin living on welfare

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One in three youth in Berlin living on welfare
Bitter outcome of the Left Party-SPD coalition
By Dietmar Henning
21 August 2009

Child poverty is on the increase in the German capital. According to
official statistics nearly 171,000 children and youth under 18 years
in Berlin are dependent on miserly Hartz IV welfare payments. This
figure represents 34.5 per cent of youth under 18 and 38.7 per cent
amongst children under the age of eight.

Most of the impoverished young people live in the Berlin districts of
Mitte (26,304) and Neukölln (25,210).

For nearly eight years Berlin has been governed by a state
administration consisting of a coalition between the Social Democratic
Party and the Left Party. Under this so-called “red-red senate” Berlin
has recorded the highest levels of poverty of any German city. On a
national level, one in five children is considered poor.

Unemployment in Berlin is also well over the federal average. In July
2009 unemployment rose to a rate of 14.2 percent compared to the
federal average of 8.2 percent. Altogether nearly 240,000 persons are
officially registered as unemployed in Berlin and over 80 percent of
them (192,000) are reliant on Hartz IV payments. The number of the
unemployed persons between the ages of 15 and 25 has also risen to 26,646.

All together approximately 600,000 people in Berlin are dependent on
Hartz IV welfare relief. Single parent families constitute the largest
group of the poor. About half of all poor children grow up in single
parent families. This is particularly due to the large low wage sector
in Berlin, says Sabine Walther, manager of the Child Protection
Association in Berlin. Despite working single parents are unable to
earn enough to provide for their children. More than 100,000 Berlin
citizens receive welfare assistance and are considered to be part of
the “working poor”. There are an additional 35,000 employed in Berlin
in so-called one-euro-per hour-jobs.

High levels of poverty have a devastating impact on child development.
“You can forget sport, music, school trips, everything that is so
important for development”, Ulrich Schneider, the head of a welfare
organization, told the Frankfurter Rundschau. “It is not possible to
adequately provide for a child with the average welfare payment of 240
euros per month”.

As poverty spreads in particular districts, she added, these suburbs
develop into ghettos of poverty and children and their families are
socially excluded. Many live in small apartments, are unable to learn
in the cramped conditions, “and show signs of psychosomatic stress
such as concentration problems”, Schneider said.

Political responsibility for the rising rate of poverty in Berlin lies
with the governing senate parties—the SPD and the Left Party, which
rigorously implemented the reactionary Hartz laws first introduced by
the SPD-Green federal coalition led by Gerhard Schröder (SPD). The
Hartz IV laws, which were billed as a “reform” of Germany’s labour
market, was introduced in 2005 and drastically reduced the amount and
duration of long-term unemployment and welfare payments in order to
compel workers to accept jobs paying poverty-wages.

The position of the Left Party is especially cynical. The figures for
the current levels of child poverty were revealed following a request
to the senate by Left Party deputy Margrit Barth. Since January 2002
social policy in Berlin has rested in the hands of the former German
Communist Party (DKP) member, and now Left Party senator responsible
for Labour and Social Policy, Heidi Knake Werner. This means that both
the question and answer came from the same party.

The Left Party has repeatedly expressed its verbal opposition to Hartz
IV, while claiming that it has no choice but to uphold the law and
implement federal policy. That is a deliberate deception. Nobody
forced Knake Werner and the Left Party to aggressively impose the
letter of the law as the Left party has done for years. That they did,
only underscores the complete subordination of the Left Party to the
interests of big business. From the outset the Left Party was
determined to prove that it was a “responsible” political party that
could be relied upon to defend business interests and implement
anti-working class policies with the same degree of ruthlessness as
the conservative parties.

The first official act of the SPD and the Party of Democratic
Socialism (forerunner of the Left Party), after taking over the Berlin
senate in the beginning of 2002, was to bail out the bankrupt Berlin
Landesbank with billions in taxpayers’ money. The resulting budgetary
crisis in the city was used to implement unprecedented social cuts.
Wages in the public service were slashed, working times extended,
while at the same time the government wiped out social gains and
promoted a broad network of cheap wage labor, including the notorious
one-euro-jobs.

Nor has the senate instructed the appropriate authorities in Berlin to
rule in favor of the unemployed and the poor in disputes arising from
the deliberately vague terms of Hartz IV measures. On the contrary,
the senate has instructed responsible district authorities and
decision makers to take a hard line. The Berlin job centers were often
encouraged to decide against the interests of the unemployed, even if
that meant breaking or bending the law.

Correspondingly, the month of July witnessed the highest number of
appeals in Berlin against the Hartz IV laws (2,648) since their
introduction in 2005. There is currently a backlog of nearly 30,000
appeals pending before the Berlin social court. Only around 50 percent
of such appeals in the first half of 2009 ended with judgments in
favor of the plaintiff, while the success rate in 2008 was about 48
per cent.

The points at issue mostly concern accommodation costs and cuts to
benefits. The law stipulates that the unemployed are entitled to an
“appropriate rent” but the Berlin job centers have been very
restrictive in their decisions as to what constitutes appropriate
rent. Despite drastic rises in heating and other domestic costs the
senate has refused to make any adjustment to rent allowances. In
addition, many appeals are undertaken by members of the “working poor”
who maintain that the supplement they receive to their wages is
insufficient to live on.

Benefits were also reduced for 7,530 unemployed persons in Berlin in
2008 and completely annulled for 298 persons. The job centers can
reduce Hartz IV payments by 30 percent or more, if recipients, for
example, fail to accept what the job center terms a “reasonable”.
Those most affected by such decisions are young adults under 25. The
results of the cuts were described by one spokesperson for the
unemployed: “Power cuts, renting arrears, hunger. And the feeling that
one has been had by the job centre expert”.

The demand raised in Berlin last week by an alliance of politicians
from the Greens, SPD and the Left Party, as well as social
federations, scientists and trade unionists, for a moratorium on cuts
for Hartz IV receivers, is nothing more than election campaign
propaganda. If the SPD and the Left Party really wanted to limit the
Hartz IV cuts, they could have done so a long time ago.

In 2008 the national authorities in Germany imposed 789,000 cuts or
other form of punishments on Hartz IV recipients. Most of these
judgments were completely arbitrary and two-thirds were reversed
following appeals.

The latest appeal issued by the SPD, Greens and trade unions in Berlin
is thoroughly hypocritical. The cuts implemented in benefits for the
unemployed in Berlin and elsewhere are part of a deliberate strategy.
Alongside representatives from the finance and business world, social
democrats and trade union officials sat in the Hartz commission and
collaborated in elaborating the anti-welfare laws.

Their appeal is a transparent attempt to demonstrate on the eve of
parliamentary elections that the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party
can work together—despite opposition from within their own ranks. A
leading member of the Left Party, Katja Kipping, denied that the
appeal was an attempt to initiate coalition negotiations. She quickly
added, however, “It is quite clear that we share a number of common
positions”.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/berl-a21.shtml

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