The Christian Democratic Employees’ Union of Germany (CDA) strongly condemned proposals from the CDU’s Economic Council that call for sharp cuts to unemployment benefits and reductions in health‑insurance coverage. “The party leadership should reject these ideas” said the CDA’s federal chairman, Dennis Radtke, for the Funke Media Group’s Monday editions.
Radtke noted that it is again astonishing how a privileged club of employers wants to decide what workers should soon give up, without offering a proposal of what contribution they are willing to make themselves. He added that the Economic Council, made up primarily of entrepreneurs, appears to try to fill a gap in understanding workers’ everyday reality with a mix of ideology and neoliberal rhetoric.
In a document titled “Agenda for Employees in Germany”, the CDU Economic Council demanded that the duration of unemployment benefit I (Arbeitslosengeld I) be capped at twelve months for all recipients. The paper also argued that several health‑insurance benefits-such as dental treatment-can be adequately private‑secured and should no longer be financed through the collective wage‑based system that imposes costs on contributors.