The Hartz IV read: "Hartz four" reforms, which were passed into law in and took effect in Januarysignificantly toughened the conditions under which people could claim welfare or unemployment benefits. They require benefits recipients to regularly attend meetings with a job-center advisor and show they're actively looking for work, or enrolled in approved work-preparatory skills-training programs.
The advisor is empowered to withhold benefits if the claimant refuses a job - even if the job is not what the claimant would like to do. Even a single failure to show up for job-center meetings can result in partial loss of benefits - and regularly failing to show up results in their complete cancellation.
Benefits packages include the government paying for the rent on a modest apartment, medical insurance, and a monthly stipend. The clear intent of the Hartz IV package is to avoid making life too comfortable for benefits recipients, and hartz-reform översätt nudge or push them into employment - even if poorly paid.
Hartz IV was the fourth in a series of business-friendly labor-market reforms enacted in andall named after Peter Hartz, the head of an SPD government-appointed labor market reform commission. Since the reforms, the rate of unemployment in Germany has gradually decreased, except for a temporary setback in the wake of the financial crisis.
Mainstream politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, support the Hartz reforms, and have no intention of repealing or softening them. They attribute Germany's comparative economic success over the past decade in significant part to the reforms.
It has become a standard trope of the German left that Hartz IV is an inhumane, pro-capitalist, 'neoliberal' social and economic instrument tailored for the interests of corporations, and unnecessarily harsh and stingy towards unemployed workers.
On the left, the coercive provisions of Hartz IV are seen as a way of humiliating the unemployed and squeezing the poor. Many people who had reliably voted for the SPD prior to remain so disgruntled and enraged by the party's perceived betrayal of working-class interests that they refuse to believe the electoral campaign commitments of the new SPD leader, Martin Schulz, who says he intends to reform the Hartz IV system to make it a bit more generous.
Skip to content Skip to main menu Skip to more DW sites. Latest videos Latest audio. Latest audio Latest videos. In focus. Heat and drought. Good or bad? McDougall Rage on the left It has become a standard trope of the German left that Hartz IV is an inhumane, pro-capitalist, 'neoliberal' social and economic instrument tailored for the interests of corporations, and unnecessarily harsh and stingy towards unemployed workers.
EU nationals in Germany face restrictions on 'Hartz IV' social welfare A new bill being discussed by Germany's Cabinet could see unemployed EU nationals being denied social welfare for five years. Supporters of the legislation have said it would prevent a "certain form of social tourism.
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