Social Security: Guaranteeing a First-Class Social System

Old-age security: a secure pension for all

The German pension system does not deliver on its promise of a dignified, financially secure life in old age. Pensioners acutely affected by old-age poverty find themselves forced, despite their advanced age, to top up their inadequate pension income with part-time jobs or by collecting deposit bottles, and demographic change in Germany will cause the number of those affected to rise drastically further in the future. We therefore call for a fundamental reform of the statutory pension insurance, based on the principles of justice, solidarity and equal treatment, because old-age poverty is not a law of nature.

The unconditional pension guarantee

We want to make pensions secure again, for everyone. To do so, we must move beyond the outdated pay-as-you-go system. Instead, we argue for the introduction of a 100-per-cent state-financed, contribution-free, uniform and unconditional pension guarantee that offers everyone an adequate income in retirement, well above today’s average pensions, so that pensioners are not left worse off. We only want to cap the pensions of people with very high pension entitlements, such as senior federal civil servants. This is possible because our society as a whole is becoming ever more productive, even though fewer people are working. So fewer people produce more social wealth than before. A state-financed pension ensures that everyone benefits from this wealth in retirement and can grow old in dignity.

We reject a funded state pension that invests in the international stock market, because it merely shifts the financing of national pensions onto other states and their workers, and so deepens global inequalities and tensions further.

Enabling inflation-protected saving

Although the unconditional pension guarantee is meant to be entirely sufficient to cover an average standard of living in old age, we want to give citizens the option of setting aside part of their income in a state retirement-savings fund, which guarantees savers an inflation-adjusted return of exactly zero per cent and is paid out at the start of retirement age. The saved money always stays in the fund for the entire investment period and is not, as with conventional private pension products, invested on the financial market, and so is independent of share prices and interest-rate movements. The inflation gap is closed at payout using state funds.

Abolishing the civil-servant privilege in old-age provision

The existing rules exempt tenured civil servants from the obligation to contribute to the statutory pension insurance. Our model of an unconditional pension guarantee ensures contribution-free status for everyone across their entire working life, which effectively abolishes the civil-servant privilege. Instead of a separate civil-service pension, civil servants in retirement thus enjoy the same pension level and the same entitlements as everyone else. Pensioners are no longer discriminated against or favoured according to the type and extent of their working life.

For a Europe-wide unified pension system

Harmonising European social policy is both a precondition and an expected consequence of the necessary alignment of living conditions across Europe. This must also aim at the gradual alignment and, ultimately, the socially just merging of state pension systems within a European social union. Such a unified European pension system would set the same retirement age and the same pension level for all of Europe’s citizens, effectively combating old-age poverty and social resentment across national borders. The Europe-wide unconditional pension guarantee thus makes an important contribution to developing a European common spirit and to the further coming-together of Europe’s population.

Housing: not a commodity, but a human right

Housing is not a commodity, but a human right. To protect it, we want to remove rental housing extensively from the profit-driven market, especially in cities, and transfer it to non-profit, municipal providers. Only ending the profit orientation in housing will permanently resolve the worries and hardships of countless people whose rent ties up a large part of their disposable income, or who cannot find any home, or any suitable home, for themselves and their family.

To this end, we are aiming for a massive expansion of municipal housing stock; in the long term at least 70 per cent of all rental homes should be in municipal hands. Where necessary, municipal housing bodies should also build new housing units themselves. With the participation of citizens and the help of excellent architecture practices, we want to create affordable, modern and ecologically sustainable housing with a high quality of life.

Because even use and price restrictions cannot resolve the fundamental contradiction between investors’ profit interests and tenants’ interests, we reject new construction by private investors everywhere that building land is scarce.

To help tenants in the short term, we want to slow and cap rents quickly and effectively through immediate measures.

Managing municipal housing stock democratically

To ensure democratic participation by tenants in municipal housing, the stock should be managed by municipal public-law institutions. They should not work on a profit basis, but focus on safeguarding, expanding and modernising the housing stock.

Expanding municipalities’ financial room for manoeuvre

To give municipalities the financial room they need to build up municipal housing stock, the federal government should finance suitable measures such as construction, pre-emptive purchases and expropriations. If the current federal government obstructs this, we want to instruct municipal housing companies to raise the necessary money through housing bonds or long-term loans, so that they can act immediately. Interest and instalment payments can then be covered from rents. When majorities in the federal government shift, it can take over these liabilities to relieve tenants and municipalities further.

Exercising municipal pre-emption rights

We want to encourage and support municipalities in exercising their statutory pre-emption rights for plots, houses and flats, and so permanently transfer housing stock into municipal, non-profit ownership. To this end, we want to strengthen the legal certainty of pre-emption rights for municipalities.

Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co

We are committed to bringing the housing stock of large corporations into municipal ownership, if necessary through expropriation. We expressly support referendums such as Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen (“Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co”).

Municipal rather than private new construction

Where necessary, we want to drive municipal new construction forward quickly and decisively. By contrast, we reject private new construction in municipalities with scarce building land, even with use and price restrictions or as a leasehold, in order to protect tenants permanently from the profit interests of private investors.

Liveable, healthy, inclusive and ecological housing

To make new and old housing stock liveable, healthy, inclusive and ecological, we want to provide municipalities with additional funds. With the participation of tenants and neighbours, and with the support of excellent architecture practices, we want to create diverse, experimental and humane architecture that puts the health and well-being of people and the environment at its centre.

Gross-rent-neutral climate refurbishments

Climate protection and social concerns must not be played off against each other. That is why we want to guarantee climate refurbishments that are gross-rent-neutral. We want to require landlords and housing corporations to maximise the energy efficiency of their houses and flats by 2030. Costs for materials and installation should be reimbursed in full from a state climate-refurbishment fund. Rent increases on the basis of energy-efficiency refurbishments must be ruled out.

Forming tenants’ unions

We encourage the formation of tenants’ unions, modelled on Sweden and London, to hold their own in the struggle with landlords.

Discrimination-free allocation of housing

To end the massive discrimination based on racism in the allocation of housing, we want to introduce anonymised applications. Independent bodies should check whether potential tenants meet the landlord’s creditworthiness criteria. Viewings should be open to everyone who meets the creditworthiness criteria and be decoupled from the application process. People who have been looking for a home for a long time, or who meet other social criteria, should receive, along with their creditworthiness certificate, an additional priority note that is binding on landlords.

A rent moratorium in acute social crises

In the face of acute social crises, such as the coronavirus pandemic, we want to create a means of imposing rent moratoriums. Until an emergency ends, rents should be frozen at the pre-crisis level, and terminations and evictions ruled out.

A nationwide rent cap and an effective rent brake

To stop the rapid rise in rents in many cities, we want to introduce a nationwide rent cap. The rent cap should empower municipalities to set maximum local rents. We also want to tighten the rent brake. The scope for rent increases should be limited, without exceptions, to two per cent a year. We want to instruct the authorities to act against non-compliance with fines and prosecution.

No longer passing property tax on through service charges

To relieve tenants directly, we want to ban passing property tax on through service charges.

Limiting the pass-through of modernisation costs

Modernisation must not lead to unaffordable rents. That is why we want to limit the pass-through of modernisation costs to four per cent of the annual rent, and cap it at 1.50 euros per square metre over eight years.

Protection against terminations for the landlord’s own use

To protect tenants better, we want to rule out terminations for the landlord’s own use in new tenancy agreements. For existing tenancy agreements, we want to rule out such terminations when tenants are over 60 years old or have lived in the home in question for more than 20 years. In addition, only a partner, children or the landlord themselves should be allowed to take up the home.

Reform of land law

We are committed to a reform of land law in cities and rural areas. The fact that land cannot be multiplied and is indispensable can only be protected through public ownership. Only public authorisation of its use makes possible both justice and the preservation of a finite resource.

Restricting capital movement

To prevent global speculation in housing as well as cross-border money laundering, we want to restrict capital movement between the EU and third countries for the real-estate sector. Flats and properties should no longer be allowed to be sold to people or companies that do not have a (residential) base in the EU or will establish one after the purchase.

Homelessness: Housing First

We stand for a paradigm shift in measures for homeless people. People without a home should not have to qualify for a flat, but (as in Finland) be given one without preconditions or prior contributions. In this new, secure starting position, it is easier for those affected to work out a way forward with the support of social workers. Municipal real-estate companies should keep a certain quota of flats available so they can help quickly. We reject the violent clearing of homeless people who seek shelter in public places.

Preventing forced evictions

Once rent arrears have been settled, we want to rule out terminations and evictions entirely. Evictions that lead to homelessness should not be carried out.

Regulating Airbnb & Co effectively

To give municipalities the tools to regulate misused housing effectively, we are committed to a nationwide law against the misuse of residential space. Listing flats on platforms such as Airbnb should only be possible with a valid registration number. Municipalities with a tight housing market should be able to decide for themselves whether and for how long flats may be let. Private, non-commercial landlords should be able to apply for their registration number online without bureaucracy.

Protecting commercial tenants

To stop displacement in busy areas and the emergence of monostructures, we want to better protect owner-run shops and businesses. We are committed to making tenancy agreements open-ended where the tenants run a small, owner-managed, non-profit or cultural business. Through a commercial-rent cap, we want to limit commercial rents.

Democratising rural and urban planning

To democratise rural and urban planning, we want citizens and residents to be bindingly involved in drawing up spatial and land-use plans, through citizens’ assemblies or randomly selected neighbourhood councils.

A right for residents to buy when houses are sold

When a house is sold, the residents are often driven out of their neighbourhood over the medium term. We want to give residents a priority right to buy the houses they live in and manage them as a cooperative. The precondition is agreement among the residents and the founding of, or joining, a cooperative. Through the KfW and the Landesbanken, we want to support self-managed ownership with cheap loans.

Health & care: excellent provision from public hands

Physical and mental integrity is a human right and must therefore never serve corporations as an object of profit. We are committed to hospitals, healthcare staff and other healthcare providers being run exclusively by the state. This does away with the two-tier society in healthcare that arises from private and statutory health insurance.

Once the profit imperative is removed, people move back to the centre of healthcare. Everyone can then count on the best quality of care, regardless of income. Beyond that, good salaries and working conditions can be created, especially for care staff.

Guaranteeing instead of insuring

Healthcare is not a luxury, but a basic right for every person. For this reason, we want to anchor exactly this right in the Basic Law or in a future European constitution. At the same time, the quality of care must not depend on income, status, nationality, gender or the like. That is why we want to end the two-tier society in today’s health and care system. We want to replace all statutory and private health insurance with a single, state-financed health system. This does away with the regressive social contributions that especially burden poor people, as well as the unequal treatment of privately and statutorily insured people. The wasteful and unnecessary bureaucracy of the countless health-insurance funds is also eliminated in this way.

Improving services and quality

Alongside fair financing of the health system, the services it covers must also be revised. A state, an authority or a committee cannot and must not make blanket decisions about which treatment or medication patients are or are not given access to. This decision must be made jointly by doctors and patients. All evidence-based medical services that both parties consider necessary must be available to patients free of charge. Only experimental procedures or medicines, or those whose effectiveness has not yet been clearly proven by studies, should have to be confirmed by two additional doctors. We want to reimburse external costs that are a precondition for using health services, for example public-transport tickets or interpreting services.

Digitalising the health system

To make patient care as efficient and simple as possible, the entire health system should be digitalised. Electronic patient records and electronic prescriptions should allow patients and treating doctors access to all medical data such as diagnoses, treatments, medication and so on. Here, alongside patient care, data protection comes first. Access to personal data may only take place at the patient’s explicit request, which can be revoked at any time. An additional national patient portal should provide citizens with all the information about hospitals, practices, prevention, check-ups and so on.

Expanding sexual and reproductive rights

Women* must have the right to self-determined family planning. That is why we want to fully legalise abortion and delete Sections 218 and 219 of the Criminal Code (StGB). We are further committed to making training in carrying out abortions part of specialist medical training. The costs of an abortion should be covered in full by health-insurance funds. Contraceptives should be available free of charge. For hygiene products, we want to abolish VAT.

Guaranteeing one-to-one care during births

Those giving birth should have the right to personal, attentive, loving care and to excellent medical and psychosocial support. To this end, we want to create additional posts in clinics. Over the medium term, we want to guarantee one-to-one care during births.

Addressing the care crisis

Over the last two years, the pandemic has shown us how important care staff are for us all. Demographic change, too, will demand ever more of carers. That is why, over the medium term, we need 100,000 new posts in the care professions. Recruiting care workers from abroad, however, is not compatible in the long run with a Europe of solidarity, and additionally leads to wage dumping in the care sector. Instead, the care professions should finally be paid and valued in line with what they do. Wages and working conditions should be set in nationally uniform and binding collective agreements. The entire care sector should be financed through the federal budget. Care should, however, be organised at the state and municipal level, to do justice to the differing needs that exist locally. In addition, we want to improve working conditions by democratising medical institutions.

A right to psychological counselling and psychotherapy

We are committed to everyone having the right to free, timely psychological counselling or psychotherapy. To secure and expand psychological provision, everyone with the title of psychotherapist (formerly psychological psychotherapist) and medical psychotherapist should be allowed to provide therapies for patients in all recognised therapeutic methods and to bill them through statutory health insurance. As with medical care, the duration of treatment or therapy should be tailored universally to the patient. We reject the prescribed capping of therapy hours. For people with experiences of discrimination, we want to create special therapy provision and promote corresponding training.

Dealing with drugs

The current prohibition of drugs has failed. Wasted police resources, the criminalisation of users, no functioning protection of minors or prevention, and a steadily growing number of users, are the consequences of current drug policy. We stand for a new paradigm, in which we tackle the negative consequences of drug use while at the same time leaving everyone the freedom to determine their own consumption.

Dealing with drugs, users and addicts is a matter of health policy and not a case for the police. For this reason, we want to fully decriminalise drugs, modelled on Portugal. Users should not be prosecuted, but receive support from addiction counsellors where needed. We also want to create additional consumption rooms and free drug-checking services in Germany, to enable addicts to consume safely and to offer them the support they need there. The sale of drugs should take place in licensed shops, to ensure reliable protection of minors. We want to ban advertising for the purchase and use of drugs.

High care and health standards across Europe

To guarantee people across Europe the right to high health and care standards, we are committed to European minimum standards for public healthcare. We want to support regions that do not reach these standards financially and, where necessary and desired, with know-how.

Building a self-sufficient European healthcare supply

So as not to depend on global supply chains in acute health crises such as a pandemic, we are committed to building a self-sufficient European healthcare supply. Important aids and medicines should be produced in Europe and, secured by an extended supply obligation, be available in sufficient quantities even in an emergency.

Price controls for medicines

To stop the abuse of monopolies and patents in the pharmaceutical industry, we want to introduce price controls for medicines, based on benefit, development and production costs.

Ensuring gender-sensitive research

So far, medical research has often been based on studies with predominantly cis-male participants. Through requirements and additional research, we want to ensure that medicines and medical procedures are safe and effective for all genders.

Reforming the Patients’ Rights Act

The legal enforcement of compensation claims by people who have suffered a treatment error usually fails, because the patient can prove the doctor’s error but not the causal link between the treatment error and the resulting harm to health. This rule disadvantages patients with multiple conditions. That is why we want to introduce a reversal of the burden of proof. We are also committed to a liability fund and a patient advocacy service modelled on Austria, for people who cannot or do not want to take on legal proceedings.

Equality: redistributing care work

Care work should be fairly distributed. We are therefore working to close the so-called gender care gap, that is, the unequal distribution of care and household work between the genders. Through incentives, expanded rights and a care income for women*, parents, families and carers, we want to enable self-determined and equal participation in both paid work and care work.

Introducing a care income

Caring for others, such as looking after older people or children, is valuable work and should be paid accordingly. The current care allowance, or benefits such as child benefit, do not do it justice. That is why we are committed to a care income that pays caring activities, full-time and part-time, appropriately, in other words at least in line with the minimum wage. For a person with the highest level of care need, that is round-the-clock care, this currently means an income of at least 7,200 euros.

Enabling flexible care work

To give employees greater flexibility in care work, we want to guarantee more workers a reduction in working hours with a subsequent right to return to their previous hours. To this end, we want to extend the bridge part-time law to all employees who are entitled to a reduction in working hours under the Part-Time and Fixed-Term Employment Act, as well as to everyone who reduced their working hours during the coronavirus pandemic, for example to look after children. In addition, we want to introduce the option of a fixed-term break from work.

Leave for fathers and co-mothers after birth

So that fathers and co-mothers can also spend time with their child straight after the birth, we are committed to two weeks’ leave (on full pay) for fathers and co-mothers after birth. Such leave enables fathers and co-mothers to take on responsibility for parenthood early, and so strengthens equal families. We also want to introduce the “5+5+2” parental-leave model modelled on Iceland. The non-transferable parental leave of five months each can be taken jointly or independently within 36 months of the birth. The additional two months can be divided flexibly. Single parents can take the entire leave. The maximum possible parental leave is 36 months per child.

Free childcare places

Germany is currently short of 342,000 childcare places. We want to create these places and enable free childcare in small groups.

Employment: a right to good work

No one should have to experience involuntary unemployment. Our goal is therefore genuine full employment. If there are not enough jobs available in the private sector, it is the state’s task to guarantee the right to work for everyone.

Productivity gains in the private sector should be passed on to workers in the form of higher wages and shorter working hours. We want to tackle precarious employment and unfair or unequal pay.

We understand automation as an opportunity to replace unattractive or health-damaging jobs. By contrast, we reject the destruction of good jobs out of pure pursuit of profit.

Introducing a nationwide job guarantee

Everyone should have the right to a meaningful, public-good-oriented and well-paid employment opportunity in the public sector. Municipalities should provide suitable offers tailored to local social and ecological needs as well as to workers’ wishes and abilities. The job guarantee is a voluntary offer for citizens, not an obligation. It should not compete with the private sector, but create meaningful jobs in public-good-oriented areas, such as education, care, the arts, environmental management, urban maintenance and safety. By contrast, there should be no unnecessary, hollow, bureaucratic jobs (so-called “bullshit jobs”). Because the job guarantee is open to everyone, it sets an effective nationwide minimum wage and minimum conditions. The necessary funds should be provided through the federal government’s monetary capacities.

A 30-hour week for all

We want to support companies in introducing the 30-hour week. We want to subsidise the additional costs associated with reducing working hours, for example through higher staff costs, at 100 per cent in the first year, 75 per cent in the second and 25 per cent in the third year. After a transition period, in which these subsidies are open to all companies, the 30-hour week should become law.

An income guarantee for workers in CO2-intensive industries

We want to drive the social-ecological transformation forward decisively and thereby create thousands of good, green jobs. By contrast, we want to phase out CO2-intensive industries such as the extraction and burning of coal. So that workers do not have to accept losses, we want to create an income guarantee for workers in those industries that can no longer continue in the course of the ecological transformation.

Public contracts only with good wages

To create more collectively agreed jobs, we are committed to a federal collective-bargaining compliance act. It should stipulate that the federal government may only award contracts to companies that pay their staff according to collective agreements.

Good wages for entire sectors

So that good wages are paid across all companies in a sector, we want to make it easier to declare collective agreements universally binding. To this end, we want to reform the Collective Agreements Act.

Banning fixed-term contracts without objective grounds

Fixed-term employment contracts are often used as a power strategy to make in-company employee representation more difficult. We therefore want to ban fixed-term contracts without objective grounds. Trial of an employee should not be an objective ground, since this is already covered by the option of agreeing a probationary period.

Regular employment in the gig economy

We want “freelance” contractors in platform companies to receive the same social benefits as contractors in regular employment, so that they can no longer be exploited in their position as “freelance” contractors. In this context, a higher level of data protection and privacy should also be ensured for contractors, so that, for example, delivery workers are not permanently monitored by platform operators.