Witch-hunt against the unemployed in Germany

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Witch-hunt against the unemployed in Germany
By Dietmar Henning
10 February 2010

As unemployment in Germany continues to rise so do the number of
attacks on the unemployed by leading politicians, economic “experts”
and sections of the media.

A few weeks ago, the government advisory “economics expert” Wolfgang
Franz called for the basic level of unemployment benefit (Hartz IV) to
be cut from its current level of a miserly €359 a month to just €250.
To support this proposal, he referred to a policy paper on
unemployment benefit “reforms” presented to parliament by the private
think tank he chairs —the Economic Development Research Institute.

In mid-January, the Hesse prime minister and vice chairman of the
Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Roland Koch, publicly demanded that
all unemployment benefit recipients be obliged to accept any job
offer. He said there were people who were taking advantage of the
benefit system and using loopholes in it.

The CDU in Hesse is well known for its extreme right-wing policies and
the aggressive slogans it uses to fuel reactionary campaigns. In the
1990s, the party used millions of euro of donations, which had been
channelled round their legal campaign funds, to finance an
anti-immigrant election campaign. Then, when the scandal broke out
over the improper funding, Koch provocatively quipped that the
donations had come from “Jewish legacies.” Since his election as prime
minister in 1999, Koch has used his position to ward off any criticism
and dispense lying propaganda.

Last Tuesday, the Süddeutsche Zeitung led with the headline “Increase
in unemployment benefit abuse.” The main story quoted an extract from
the annual statement of the federal labour agency (BA), which says
that during 2009, 165,000 cases of false benefit claims had resulted
in fines and penalization for the accused—1.8 percent more than in 2008.

Other newspapers followed suit with similar headlines. The “abuse”
mainly concerns “cases where long-term unemployed persons have given
incorrect information to the job centre and community work agency,
with the intention of receiving more benefits than they are entitled
to,” wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

A serious evaluation of the figures provided by the BA reveals that
these alarmist headlines and horror stories represent nothing more
than a flagrant witch-hunt of long-term unemployed and poor people. In
2009, an average of about 6.5 million people were receiving Hartz IV
(basic state unemployment benefits). According to government figures,
the rate of “false claims” was no more that 1.9 percent. The alleged
“rise in abuse” turns out, on closer examination, to actually amount
to a marginal 0.1 percent.

Furthermore, the 165,000 cases of “false claims” include simple
irregularities, like failing to follow proper procedures, which make
people liable to fines, as well as cases in which such irregularities
were merely suspected.

The BA has itself advised against reading too much into the figures,
saying that the level of “false claims” is relatively negligible in
comparison with the numbers of claimants and the total amount claimed.

Claimants’ organizations have since warned against the scapegoating of
Hartz IV recipients by sections of the media and called upon the
government to “focus on the norm rather than the exceptions.” Their
leading spokesperson, Ulrich Schneider, declared that “politicians
should concentrate on 6.3 million people who are unemployed through no
fault of their own and help them to find a way out of poverty and back
into work.”

Claimant appeals against benefit verdicts

As for the 165,000 incorrectly filled out application forms, anyone
who has seen these forms will know how easy it is to inadvertently
enter incorrect information. At the same time, the number of appeals
by claimants against the benefit-issuing authorities’ decisions has
risen to a record high. The German claims courts registered 193,199
such appeals last year—19,363, or 10 percent more, than in the
previous year. In 2008, the numbers of claims had already risen by 28
percent over the previous year.

The president of the biggest social claims court in Berlin, Sabine
Schudoma, revealed that around 27,000 appeals against benefit claim
judgments were processed there last year. This represents an increase
of nearly 25 percent over the previous year. “The exception is
becoming the rule,” she said. “The tide of appeals claims has been
growing year by year—in our case, day by day.” The fact that 51
percent of these appeals achieve at least partial success is
“conspicuously striking,” she noted.

The small-claims magistrate in North Rhine-Westphalia has had to “stem
a flood of appeals against benefit claim decisions,” reported the
Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. Particularly affected are unemployed
claimants in large towns like Essen, Duisburg or Mülheim. The
responsible claims court in Duisburg noted a rise of 20 percent in
such appeals in 2009.The total number of such claims in North
Rhine-Westphalia courts was more than 27,500—a rise of nearly 8
percent. And here, too, nearly every second appeal made by long-term
unemployed claimants was successful.

Jürgen Brand, the president of the North Rhine-Westphalia federal
state social courts, has declared that the benefit claim processing
agencies often base their decision on the principle that if the
claimant’s rights are not defined precisely enough in law then their
claim will be denied. He confirmed that the employment benefit
agencies have been processing claims more harshly over the past two to
three years. The agency workers justify their decisions in court by
saying, “If I don’t make these sorts of judgments, the finance officer
will bite my head off.” Thus, justice is based strictly on financial
criteria.

In response to Koch’s proposals, Brand quipped, “Greetings to Hesse:
what you are proposing there is already happing here.” If anyone
refuses to accept a job offer, their basic benefit is reduced from the
existence minimum of €359 to €250. If they refuse for a second time, a
further €100 is deducted. A third time, and they lose their housing
allowance. “It’s a tough sanctions policy,” says Brand. The job
centres use this policy frequently. In Duisburg alone, where
unemployment stands at 13.3 percent, about a third of the roughly
3,000 jobless under the age of 25 have had their benefits completely
withdrawn.

In view of this situation and the fact that the basic existence
minimum is completely insufficient to live on (80 cents is allowed
monthly for toys for children under five), it is all the more
astonishing that more than 98 percent of long-term unemployed fill in
their claims forms correctly.

Such a rate is hardly achieved when it comes to millionaires and
billionaires filling out their income tax declaration forms. The
German tax expert Hans-Lothar Merten estimates that about €600 billion
of undeclared assets have been stashed away in tax havens abroad by
wealthy Germans.

At the moment, leading government politicians (predominantly in the
CDU and Free Democratic Party) are currently seeking to stop the
acquisition of a CD containing details of 1,500 German tax evaders.
The CD database, which is being offered for sale by a former IT
manager of the British bank HSBC, is supposed to contain information
that would force rich and super-rich Germans to pay about €200 million
in tax arrears. This represents an average of more than €130,000 in
unpaid taxes—a sum far beyond the reach of any unemployed person
condemned to a lifetime of poverty.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/germ-f10.shtml

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