Andrea Nahles says in a lunch talk that the Germans have a “lust for work”. “Actually, the only thing missing are employers who want to pay.”
In a lunch talk by the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA) on March 7, 2023, the head of the Federal Employment Agency, Andrea Nahles, said that Germans “want to work”, although young people in particular often think of quiet quitting. You can see that in the many hours worked in 2022. The BDA posts its quote on Twitter – but accidentally speaks of “overtime”. This “Freudian typo” really gets people on Twitter upset.
Andrea Nahles: Many hours of work show that Germans enjoy working
Overall, the workforce in Germany worked more last year. The volume of work rose by 1.4 percent to 61.1 billion hours, as reported by the Institute for Labor Market and Vocational Research of the Federal Employment Agency (IAB) in Nuremberg on Tuesday, March 7, 2023. The number of people in employment also increased by 590,000 within a year in 2022 to a record average of 45.57 million.
A development that the chairwoman of the Federal Employment Agency, Andrea Nahles, takes up at the virtual lunch talk of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA). The numbers show that the Germans would like to work, the BDA later quoted the former SPD chairwoman in a tweet. Unfortunately, “working hours” becomes “overtime.” The BDA only corrects itself in a comment below its tweet, when BuzzFeed News DE she asks how many of the working hours are actually overtime, the tweet is suddenly deleted. Glad we got him have archived.
“All clear, it was just a Freudian slip,” jokes a user on Twitter on the morning of March 8, 2023. He is referring to the “Freudian slip of the tongue” (named after Sigmund Freud), with which one makes a slip of the tongue, with this one Error but a really existing thought or the true intention of the speaker becomes clear. In the case of the BDA, which describes itself as the “voice of the social market economy and the advocate of our economic order”, that would probably be the favor of (unpaid) overtime, just one of many reasons why the concept of work no longer makes sense.
More on the topic: In a recent interview, Andrea Nahles said that work is not a pony farm.
Bock at work: 9 Twitter reactions to Andrea Nahle’s statement about the desire to work
In retrospect, the comments on the “Freudian typo” are all the funnier. Because whether overtime or not: the fact that people in Germany work a lot is certainly due to many things: inflation, the all-clear in the corona pandemic (the mask requirement only recently fell), for example, to name just two things. But the fact that everyone is so “in the mood for work” is certainly not the reason, users on Twitter agree. Here are nine reactions to the BDA’s faux pas.
1. Want to work? Probably not…
2. …or that
3. April, April!
4. Welcome to the Today Show with Andrea Nahles.
5. “Actually, the only thing missing are employers who want to pay.”
6. Andrea Nahles and her work ethic remind some of a North Korean news anchor.
7. Typical employer…
Because illnesses such as burn-outs are also on the rise. The health politician Johannes Werner (Greens) therefore criticized Andrea Nahle’s Ponyhof statement a lot.
8. “Cucumbers for four euros show that Germans want three-digit supermarket bills for singles.”
By the way: This TikToker from Hamburg makes fun of an expensive cucumber in the supermarket.
9. Simply “crazy”, this user comments a little more aggressively.
(With material from the dpa)
