At nine o'clock on an ice-cold December morning, Kerstin Boughalem, 50, is already at her post in front of the door of the Rixdorf Protestant parish, in the middle of Berlin's multicultural Neukölln neighborhood. Their job is to control access to the facilities that the municipality has provided to the Tafel, the food bank for the destitute founded 30 years ago, which survives thanks to donations from supermarkets and its army of volunteers. When the truck arrives with the food, users are allowed to pass in groups of ten, gathering with their carts on the sidewalk where there is still snow. Most are regulars and know how it works; They chat animatedly and take it easy.
Boughalem has a lot in common with some of them. She is a recipient of the so-called citizen's benefit, the benefit received by those who have overcome unemployment and have no other means of making a living. He might be on the other side of the queue, but he is on the side of those who are helping with their time. “I do volunteer work,” she says with a touch of pride. “Of course I would like to work and have more income, but that is impossible for me,” he complains. He tried. With full-time jobs, but also with some mini-jobs, as in Germany there are jobs with a few hours that are not paid. None were viable. One of her three children has a disability and she always has to accompany them to the hospital when they are admitted.
Kerstin Boughalem, volunteer at Tafel, the largest food bank in Germany, in the community of Rixdorf in Neukölln (Berlin), on December 7th.Elena Sevillano
Driven by the conservative opposition, the debate has flared up again in Germany about whether it is worth working, whether it is more comfortable to live on subsidies than to have a job with a minimum wage that is at most the same or barely more than the citizen's allowance offers important social reform. the legislative period for Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “Who wants to get up early and effortlessly get money from the state?” CDU leader Friedrich Merz and his general secretary Carsten Linnemann have been crying on television and in tabloids like Bild for weeks. The announced 12% increase in social benefits from January 1st was the perfect excuse for them to reignite the controversy. “Which employee receives such salary increases?” asked Merz.
Boughalem, a German who took the last name of her Turkish-born ex-husband, is bothered by the debate, although she recognizes that there may be people who prefer to live without work. She is motivated, she assures, and trained (she has two degrees from the FP, in social welfare and as a hospital cook). However, he has been living on welfare for more than a decade now; this year with her 502 euros plus her daughter's around 400 euros. He uses these 900 euros a month to maintain his house. It is very tight, he says, especially in recent months due to inflation that has affected food and energy costs. The last electricity bill: “211 euros,” he notes.
Kerstin Boughalem, volunteer at Tafel, the largest food bank in Germany, in the community of Rixdorf in Neukölln (Berlin), on December 7th.Elena Sevillano
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Precisely to counteract the very high inflation that Germans have suffered since the Russian invasion of Ukraine – currently moderate at 3.2%, but which exceeded 10% at the end of last year – the citizen's allowance will be updated in 2024. A benefit recipient without family responsibilities will see this increase from 502 euros per month to 563 euros. For some, this 12% increase is too much. Merz has proposed not applying it, thereby saving and closing the budget gap that is straining Germany's public finances, which are in crisis after a constitutional ruling upended all public spending. “The increase is excessive considering that those who receive it should have an incentive to join the labor market,” stressed the Christian Democrat leader.
The idea has also emerged in conservative media that the same income flows into the house of a family that lives on citizen's allowance as if a parent worked for the minimum wage. In a recent survey, 64% of Germans fear that social benefits could keep them from working. The Forsa survey for Stern magazine shows that voters for the AfD and the Christian Democrats of the CDU are the most critical of the increase in benefits. 85% in the first case and 78% in the second case believe that it will no longer be worthwhile for the recipients to look for a job.
“Every job – regardless of income – requires a higher disposable income than not having a job and being solely dependent on citizens’ money,” counters Holger Schäfer, a labor market economist at the employer-oriented German University of Economics in Cologne. The expert recognizes that “in principle, every social assistance system contains a certain disincentive to work”, but he defends the German basic income, apart from a few very specific points. One of these disadvantages – which is provided for in the regulations of citizen's benefit, but also its predecessor, the controversial Hartz IV – is the possibility of working a few hours a week without foregoing benefits and earning additional income. As planned, he says, “it encourages part-time work but discourages people from taking full-time jobs.”
Public television has tried to show that statements such as those made by the leader of the Christian Democrats, who said that “people will not go back to work because they expect that at the end of the year they will receive more in transfers from the state than “if they do a menial job” are actually wrong. Even after the increase on January 1st, the monitor program, with the help of the trade union-affiliated Institute for Economic and Social Sciences (WSI) of the Hans Böckler Foundation, calculated that a person without family responsibilities receives an average of 532 euros more if they work full-time Working minimum wage, while families with three children receive between 429 and 771 euros more, depending on the age of the minors.
What is crucial is that, in addition to greater tax relief on earned income, low-income earners are also entitled to other benefits such as housing benefit or child benefit. “In all simulations you get more money when you work, and sometimes the difference is very clear,” Bettina Kohlrausch, director of the WSI, told the show. The difference between both regimes was minimal. Since the minimum wage was introduced in 2015, it has risen from 8.50 euros to the planned 12.41 euros at the beginning of 2024, which corresponds to an increase of 46%. During the same period, citizen income for single people increased by 41.4%.
Social welfare was one of the points of friction between the three parties in the governing coalition – Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals – who finally managed to agree on cuts for the 2024 budget in mid-December without affecting benefits. The FDP Liberals called for cuts in social spending, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party flatly rejected. The Liberals' general secretary, Bijan Djir-Sarai, agreed with the conservative opposition to stop the increase in citizens' benefits. “It is clear that the welfare state in Germany costs too much money. Every third euro that the state spends goes towards social spending. “That is no longer possible,” he said in a recent interview with the Bild newspaper. Ultimately, despite the debate about the generous German welfare state, the benefits remain unaffected. Boughalem and the more than five million Germans, including adults and children, who receive citizen's benefit will see a 12% increase in income in just a few days.
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