Companies in Germany must offer their employees compulsory corona tests if they are not working in the home office. According to information from the German Press Agency, the German federal government decided that in Berlin. “In principle, companies must offer their employees a test offer once a week. Only in exceptional cases may the obligation include two tests per week,” said the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
The decision is merely an obligation to make an offer; there is no obligation to test for employees. There should also be no documentation requirement. For a long time, Peter Altmaier’s (CDU) Ministry of Economic Affairs resisted such a decision and, according to the ministry, relied on the voluntary nature of companies.
For many companies, such an obligation to make an offer does not change much from the point of view of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. According to the ministry, around 70 percent of the companies are now offering their employees weekly test options, with additional offers being added. This was also borne out by the federal government’s surveys last week. In mid-March it was around 35 percent.
The German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) meanwhile does not want to compensate companies for additional costs due to the test offer obligation. “This is now a national effort and everyone has to participate,” he said Tuesday morning on “Deutschlandfunk”.
The wholesalers and foreign traders reject the corona test obligation for companies. “Nine out of ten companies are already testing their employees for the corona virus or will do so shortly,” says the President of the Federal Association of Wholesale, Foreign Trade, Services (BGA), Anton Börner, the newspapers of the “Funke Mediengruppe” according to the preliminary report. Börner explains that the companies are doing everything they can to help overcome the crisis.
Chemical employers also consider the announced obligation to offer corona tests in companies to be superfluous. “The economy has been testing for months when it is necessary to protect our employees and the processes in production, and without any legal constraint,” said the president of the employers’ association BAVC, Kai Beckmann, in Wiesbaden. He added: “We will only win the fight against the pandemic if we vaccinate more quickly over the long term. We will not win it with new bureaucracy for the companies.”
Meanwhile, several large German textile retailers are resisting the government’s plans to stipulate a tougher lockdown for retailers in the Infection Protection Act in the event of high incidence figures. “Once again, politicians can think of nothing else than to close the retail trade. This is not a strategy – these are arbitrary measures that are carried out on the backs of individual industries and the employees,” said the head of the fashion company s.Oliver, Claus- Dietrich Lahrs, the German Press Agency.
Lahrs complained that the new draft of the Infection Protection Act also classifies trade as an infection driver across the board. It has long been clear that this lacks any scientific basis. The head of the textile chain Ernstings family, Timm Homann, spoke of a “total failure of political crisis management”.
The head of the textile discounter Kik, Patrick Zahn, said he was ready to endorse a short-term hard lockdown. “But the way the changes in the Infection Protection Act are now laid out, it is not a real perspective from the lockdown.” Once again, some sectors would be hit disproportionately hard, while large parts of the economy could continue to operate without restrictions or with only very few restrictions. (dpa / reuters / apa / red)
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