Jens Südekum, an economics professor and consultant for Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, has expressed openness to the German Trade Union Confederation’s (DGB) proposal for a mandatory company retirement plan. According to Südekum’s statements in “Handelsblatt,” this future pension reform would involve establishing a compulsory, capital-backed occupational scheme where both employees and employers contribute funds. He concluded that the chief of the DGB, Yasmin Fahimi’s demand is heading “in the right direction.”
This push has also gained support within the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Sebastian Roloff, a speechwriter for the parliamentary group on economic policy, told “Handelsblatt” that occupational pensions should play an even stronger role in future retirement planning. However, he made a key caveat: such initiatives must not come at the expense of maintaining the security level of the statutory pension insurance. He added that any measure requiring businesses to bear costs was fundamentally interesting.
The DGB advocates for this mandatory company pension benefit across all employment sectors. Fahimi based her argument on the fact that approximately 20 million workers in Germany currently lack occupational retirement provisions, often because they are employed in companies without collective bargaining agreements. The unions intend to regulate this collectively for every employee, recommending that collective agreements serve as the foundation.
