ABSTRACT
In 2004, in Germany, the so-called ‘Hartz reforms’, named after the head of a commission on labour market reforms, triggered massive protests. These reforms cut back the rights of the long-term unemployed and introduced institutional reform, which, while promising individualised case management support in the future, in fact brought in, above all, more administrative control and hardships for the unemployed. The protests concentrated in the new Länder, where the average level of unemployment (about 20 per cent) was twice as high as in the old Länder, and where many considered these reforms to be part of a broader context characterized by a general feeling of being left facing an insecure and depressing economic and social future. The reforms implemented a new system in
regarding their entitlement to allowances and the conditions linked thereto; in this respect they are now treated according to social assistance rules. To some extent, the protests were also fuelled by the fact that changes in labour market administration and in social entitlements were not seen to remedy the huge job deficit. With an eye on this, the Minister for Economic and Labour Affairs announced, during the heated debate on the Hartz reforms, plans to create about half a million ‘one-euro jobs’. He thereby suddenly pushed to the foreground an element that had been a non-issue in the whole concept of the Hartz reforms and in government policies of the previous years: the creation of job opportunities outside the mainstream labour market. The new programme provides that the long-term unemployed (and especially the young ones among them) are to be placed in various areas of public utility (such as gardening, care work, etc.); the symbolic amount of money (one or two euros per hour) they receive for that work is in addition to their social assistance allowance.
