Workfare

The term workfare has been adapted from Welfare ( engl. welfare ) and referred to a labor market policy concept, which linked government transfers with a commitment to take up work. The resultant in the United States in the 1990 years model aims to "bring as many transfer recipients to accept a unsubsidized employment in the open labor market " without additional qualification measures and thus differs from other concepts such as the original understanding of civil work.

Idea

Workfare are activation policies, which mainly aim to increase the job search and consumption through binding agreements and threats of sanctions. The following three features are decisive:

For Wisconsin

Workfare is mainly in the United States an important element of social systems ( where they exist: the social policy is largely a matter for the states ). Especially the most part followed the U.S. state of Wisconsin with his program " Wisconsin Works" in Milwaukee, the idea of workfare under the maxims of " no work, no pay " or " Whoever can work must work". This is accomplished in a tiered system of measures:

• Habituation for the 'hard work, maximum of 24 months, 28 hours of work and 12 hours of training per week.
• Municipal service work for non -place ', a maximum of nine months with 30 hours of work and 10 hours of training per week.
• Work trials with wage subsidy in the first labor market, for a maximum of six months, full working time and full salary.
• Regular employment in the primary labor market.

Like virtually all social benefits for able-bodied in the United States is the power due to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act ( PRWORA ) of 1996 limited to two years in a row and five years over their entire career.

Germany

An obligation to work is for the unemployed in Germany in fact since time immemorial. But this was in the past reasonableness criteria, which declined in the form of a professional class protection over the period of unemployment tied. A recourse to community service has always resulted strictly speaking for long-term unemployed as well, but only in the course of the 1990s started some municipalities ( Bielefeld, Cologne, Krefeld, Leipzig, Nordhausen, Offenbach, Osnabrück, Paderborn, Pforzheim, Saarbrücken, Siegen and Stuttgart) model projects, based on the present, so-called One-Euro -Job- model ( work opportunity with compensation for additional expenditure ) among unemployment benefit II. Many other municipalities copied these models over the years, until it came to a nationally consistent basis with the Hartz concept. However, up to now are only one part of the long-term unemployed in such measures, while in the pure workfare concept taking up work is to be mandatory, so implemented for all unemployed.

In Germany, the workfare concept has already been introduced in the form of One-Euro- Jobs and combined wage models. Alternative approaches to workfare, in particular wage Bezuschussungen as the combined wage or the activating social assistance but repeatedly discussed. Roland Koch is one of the pioneers of this idea.

In the Future Report 2009 of the State of North Rhine -Westphalia under Jürgen Rüttgers states: The resulting incentive to take such offers instead of by the state offered voluntary all-day activity in the primary labor market, which are currently the most part hardly taken into rational decision into account, can be a significant employment potential in mobilize a simultaneous massive budget relief. Similarly, Horst Seehofer presented in July 2009, the final report of the Commission on the Future of the state of Bavaria, in which an " intensive claiming a consideration " for government transfers is required.

As a result of the " Hartz IV " ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court of 9 February 2010, the question was in the social law again discussed intensively whether workfare elements in the Second Book of the Social Code, eg Power cuts in unemployment benefits after rejecting a job opportunity are compatible with the concept of human dignity in Article 1 of the Basic Law.

As of 2011, a so-called citizen's work is to be used nationwide for long-term unemployed, which can not be conveyed otherwise.