The Federal Association of small and medium-sized entities (BVMW) hold the opinion that dismissal protection laws are the major obstacle preventing SMEs from taking on new staff in Germany. According to the association´s chairman, Mr. Mario Ohoven, this fact is confirmed by a survey carried out among 502 of the BVMW´s member companies. Therefore Mr. Ohoven is in favour of an abolition of this kind of protection in companies of up to 20 employees.
According to the survey, 322 firms (64 percent) would offer 1.323 new jobs, if the law were abolished. 139 companies (28 percent) say that they would in this case recruit new staff, but did not mention any concrete figures. Only 41 companies (8 percent) would not provide any new jobs at all. In other words: A big majority of SMEs would immediately create new jobs, if the German dismissal protection law, which is quite stringent as compared to other countries in the EU, were given up. “Companies must be provided with the opportunity to negotiate individual solutions with their employees in order to be able to react in a flexible way to changes in their order books as well as to seasonal requirements”, continued Mr. Ohoven. In this respect Germany should learn from her European neighbours.
MittelstandsBlog think: Without doubt the exaggerated provisions of the German dismissal protection law prevent companies from taking on new staff rather than encourage them. However, the demand for a complete abolition of the law is of little use given that on the one hand such a demand is grist to unions´ mills of rhetorics. On the other hand small and medium-sized entities would have even more difficulties in finding qualified staff which would prefer even more working with bigger companies of more than 20 staff in which the dismissal protection would then still be in place. 