Merz’s war on the sick note
From sick leave to part-time work, Germany’s chancellor is reviving an old debate about effort, entitlement and decline.
Dear Reader,
Learn German with Friedrich Merz and you will quickly acquire a particular vocabulary. Phrases such as „die Ärmel hochkrempeln und anpacken“ — roll up your sleeves and get stuck in — or the insistence that „Arbeit kann auch Spaß machen“: work can be fun.
Merz is convinced that a collapse in Germans’ work ethic lies at the heart of the country’s longest economic slump since the post-war boom. Listen to his speeches and, sooner or later, he will return to the same theme: German workers are no longer pulling their weight.
Over the past few weeks, the chancellor has begun turning that grievance into policy proposals.
First came a swipe at sickness leave. Reacting to figures showing that the average German employee now calls in sick for 14.8 days a year, Merz asked aloud: “Is that really necessary? That’s almost three weeks.”
A rule introduced during the pandemic, which allows employees to obtain a sick note via a phone call with their GP, was being abused by those who were simply unwilling to work, he suggested.
Next, Merz trained his sights on the four-day working week — a long-standing demand of Germany’s powerful industrial unions.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if we work 200 hours less per year than our neighbours in Switzerland, that can’t be due to cultural reasons,” he said. “Work-life balance and a four-day week won’t help us to achieve the prosperity we need to shape the future.”
Now, his CDU is preparing their next move. At the party conference in Stuttgart next month, delegates will vote on a proposal to abolish the automatic right to part-time work.
According to Gitta Connemann, the CDU lawmaker behind the motion, part-time employment has become a “lifestyle choice” — one in which too many Germans prioritise leisure over labour. Around 40 per cent of workers now put in fewer than 40 hours a week, she notes, an all-time record.
“Whoever is able to work more, should work more,” Connemann told Stern, arguing that employees who wish to reduce their hours should have to justify the decision — for example by caring for children or elderly relatives.
How has this gone down?
Badly, at least with the CDU’s junior coalition partner.
The Social Democrats have accused the conservatives of “pursuing populism at the expense of workers” and resurrecting “antiquated neoliberal policies from the 1990s”.
Speaking to Der Spiegel, SPD health spokesman Christos Pantazis defended the right to obtain sick notes remotely, arguing that it prevents contagious patients from sitting in crowded waiting rooms. His party, he warned, would also resist any attempt to weaken sick pay.
The proposal on part-time work has caused particular outrage.
“In many cases, people are already working at their limits,” said Annika Klose, the SPD’s social policy spokeswoman. Scrapping the right to part-time work would not boost employment, she argued, but instead accelerate burnout and push workers into taking early retirement.
Others, however, have rallied to Merz’s side.
Andreas Gassen, head of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, said that it was time to abolish remote sick notes. GPs couldn’t possibly make an accurate assessment of someone’s health down the phone and the system was creating false incentives, he stated. As for part-time workers, he argued that they benefit fully from Germany’s healthcare system while contributing significantly less to its financing.
The German Economic Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank, has backed the CDU proposal as well. The automatic right to part-time work, economist Holger Schäfer argued, is an anachronism from an era of mass unemployment. Today, Germany has the opposite problem: too few workers to fill too many jobs.
“Employees are increasingly able to enforce their preferred working hours even without legal backing,” Schäfer said.
Thanks to “spoiled” millennials, Germany has “reached the brink of collapse,” lamented Reinhold Würth, one of the country’s richest businessmen. The 90-year-old hardware magnate said he still works late into the evening — a discipline, he added, that younger generations were never taught.
What happens next?
The question of whether Germans have become work-shy has been simmering since the pandemic normalised home office. It is no longer confined to killjoy conservatives. Die Zeit recently ran a long feature under the headline: “It’s half past nine in the morning. Why is nobody working?”
The same statistics are endlessly recycled. Sick days are at a record high; the share of part-time workers has doubled since reunification; German employees work significantly fewer hours than the OECD average.
The debate has hardened into a generational culture war. Boomer commentators accuse Gen Z of choosing self-care over collective responsibility. One Hamburg tech firm famously justified its refusal to hire younger staff by saying: “Anyone who has to go to yoga after six hours is no help to us.”
Gen Z’s self-appointed spokespeople don’t deny taking life less seriously than their parents — but argue there is little incentive to break their backs “if we don’t even know whether the world will still exist when we get old”.
As ever, though, there are lies, damned lies - and then there are statistics.
In this week’s Saturday Essay, Rachel Stern examines whether the Protestant work ethic that made Germany great has really disappeared. The paradoxical truth? The rise in part-time work turns out to be one of the quiet motors holding together Germany’s overstretched public finances.
News in Brief
• The Greens have been accused of hypocrisy after voting alongside the AfD in the European Parliament to stall the EU-Mercosur free trade deal by referring it to the European Court. Centrist critics say the move undermines efforts to create the world’s largest free-trade bloc at a time of rising global protectionism.
• Germany’s rearmament drive is entering a new phase. After approving almost €50bn in military purchases in a single day in December, the Bundestag will next month vote on a €600m plan to procure armed drones from two German defence firms — a step long delayed by ethical concerns.
• A government commission tasked with simplifying Germany’s welfare system has unveiled proposals to bundle payments and automate benefits. Child benefit, which currently requires a 26-page application, would be paid automatically. Labour Minister Bärbel Bas said the reforms meant “less paperwork, simpler applications, faster decisions”.
From the Saturday Edition
• Rachel Stern on Germany’s emotional break with the United States — from the “candy bombers” of the Berlin Airlift to the shock of Trump turning his attention to Greenland.
• Jörg Luyken on why Germany’s €50bn arms shopping spree matters less than the industrial and logistical bottlenecks that stand in the way of being “war-ready” by 2029.
Our Wednesday edition tells you what is happening. Our Saturday edition tells you why it matters. Join now for €1 a week.
I agree with Luke - 3 weeks' sick leave unless you have a long term health condition or have had flu is too much. But there's nothing wrong with working part-time. I work part-time and I do have an elderly mother, but it's really nothing to do with the State what one does with one's non-working time! Also, employers often have no budget for a full time person but can afford someone on a fractional basis.
I think 3 weeks of sick leave is too much, but I think part-time work is a good thing because if they cracked down on it, a lot of people would probably leave the workforce and claim Bürgergeld instead.