Guarantee of sufficient resources: Greens warn of cuts

“Red-Green was rightly proud of the Vienna model of minimum income,” said Judith Pühringer, who was not in office, with conviction. Vienna relied on incentives and not on pressure. That will change now, she criticized. The SPÖ and NEOS would resolve to tighten the initiative by means of an initiative application, although no review period was provided: “And that in the middle of the corona crisis.” Younger people in particular are affected.

Criticism of “neoliberal punishment fantasies”

Specifically, the “Employment Bonus Plus” is to be deleted. One-off payments of up to around 900 euros were provided for people who were employed for a longer period of time. More than 110,000 people affected by poverty would no longer receive this bonus in the future, it is complained. Furthermore, there is a reduction if recipients continue not to actively participate and do not make an effort to integrate into the labor market. That was already the case so far, but now the minimum income will be canceled for at least a month – even if those affected change their behavior beforehand, as the Greens reported.

Another point that has been criticized concerns the so-called four-month period. This is how long recipients under the age of 25 have had time to begin employment integration measures. Now this must happen immediately. The requirement that the authorities must submit an offer should also be dropped. The deadline had been discussed intensively with the SPÖ before, said Pühringer. Apparently the first opportunity has now been used to abolish it.

According to social spokeswoman Viktoria Spielmann, the corresponding decision should be made in the social committee on Thursday. She lamented “neoliberal punishment fantasies” and called on the red-pink coalition to withdraw the proposed law. She was also astonished that the NEOS, which would claim to be a transparency party, let the waiver of an assessment pass.

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