Berlin The planned higher standard rates for citizen income could also affect the payment of civil servants. Because according to two fundamental judgments of the Federal Constitutional Court, a minimum distance must be maintained between the state, tax-financed protection of the subsistence level and the salary. According to current law, this is not complied with everywhere, so that some countries are already making expensive adjustments.
In May 2020, the Karlsruhe judges decided that the state would only adequately meet its obligation to pay civil servants if the net salary – including family-related benefits and child benefit – was at least 15 percent above the basic security level. In addition, the salary must also reflect the special needs of families with children.
Even though the verdicts only directly affected Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia, the Federal Constitutional Court also ordered the other 14 federal states and the federal government to review salaries. The reactions are very different and range from the elimination of lower salary groups and grades to increasing the family allowance and rent-related allowances for civil servants.
Even before the citizens’ income, there were adjustments amounting to millions
In August, for example, the Hessian state government agreed with the government factions on key points for gradually adjusting salaries. The salaries of civil servants and pensioners will be increased by three percent on April 1, 2023 and January 1, 2024 – in addition to the agreed wage and salary increases.
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In addition, child allowances for civil servants will increase significantly. Employees in salary group A5 – which starts at a basic salary of just over EUR 2290 – will be transferred to the higher-paid salary group A6 on April 1, 2023. The starting salaries for judges and public prosecutors will also be increased. The state budget will therefore face additional costs of 195 million euros in the coming year and a further 274 million euros in 2024.
>> Read here: The new citizens’ allowance: what the federal government is planning in concrete terms
After the draft law had been presented, the district chairman of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) in Hesse-Thuringia, Michael Rudolph, already criticized that the alimony paid to state civil servants was “just as unconstitutional after the reform as before the reform”. Because even the planned measures do not create the minimum distance to basic security.
This problem could become even worse in the coming year if the basic security benefits are significantly increased with the citizens’ allowance. The Federal Council initially stopped the project on Monday. But now a compromise is being sought in the mediation committee. The increase in the standard rates is also supported by the Union parties, who see numerous “weaving errors” in the rest of the Citizen Income Act.
>> Read here: The Federal Council does not agree to citizen money – what is the problem and how to proceed
“The highest court judgments on the distance requirement are clear,” said the chairman of the trade union umbrella organization DBB officials’ association and collective bargaining union, Ulrich Silberbach, the Handelsblatt. In this respect, the federal, state and local governments would have to structure the salaries of their civil servants in such a way that they would always be at least 15 percent above the transfer income.
It’s not about social envy, Silberbach said. It is right to raise the standard rates for citizen income. “It is just as right, however, to pay public service employees appropriately. The country is prosperous enough for both.”
The Federal Constitutional Court has given legislators a great deal of leeway
Since the basic security of the subsistence level depends very much on the individual case, it is not yet possible to say what effects the citizen benefit reform may have on civil servants’ salaries, says Christian Koch, who teaches at the German University for Administrative Sciences in Speyer.
However, the Federal Constitutional Court has given the legislature a wide scope to take into account the requirements of the minimum distance requirement when determining the remuneration. In addition to the increase in the basic salary and changes in the law on state aid, an increase in the family allowance is also an option, the judges in Karlsruhe decided.
“This indicates possible adjustments that, depending on the composition of the citizen’s allowance service package, the salary legislators in the federal and state governments are likely to make differentiated adjustments in the alimony package if the minimum distance is not maintained,” says Koch.
Overall, the adjustments could lead to a further compression of the salary structure, warns the administration scientist. This arises when only lower salary groups are raised in order to keep the distance to basic security, but not the following higher salary groups.
However, this would possibly violate the constitutional requirement of distance, which affects the salary levels in relation to one another. The Federal Constitutional Court had therefore given the employers to review the entire salary structure. Koch expects that there will be further lawsuits here: “The Federal Constitutional Court will certainly have the opportunity to further refine its alimony jurisprudence with a view to the requirements for distance and minimum distance.”
More: Unions are demanding double-digit wage increases for public employees