It was clear to everyone that the aws (Austria Wirtschaftsservice, Note) will be extremely burdened, as will finance and social security. And then you asked yourself who else could do it, who has the contacts and the infrastructure. And that is the Chamber of Commerce. And I said, ok, we’ll take care of that as a service provider for the Republic. . We do not charge any costs for this. In the meantime, 95 percent of all applications have been processed. The criticism has become very quiet and comes from companies that do not get any money. Often this is only due to problems with the submission, then we help. It is logical, however, that the guidelines are strict, because taxpayers’ money must be used in a way that prevents abuse.
Did you make any mistakes during the processing?
You could have paid more from the start. We then enforced this with the government. That’s why there was a break for two or three weeks to adapt the systems. If individual cases of hardship among our members actually do not meet the criteria, our regional chambers endeavor to support them with our own funds.
Another controversial issue is the “90 for 80” working time model proposed by the union (The working hours are to be reduced to 80 percent. The salary is reduced to only 90 percent. The difference is to be borne by the AMS.). The union accuses them of not being able to calculate.
This is a classic employee representation calculation that forgets about the non-wage costs. In addition, the operation would have to assume the costs after the AMS financing expires. So it will be very expensive. Where should he get the money for and for the additional employee? Austria is already a top tax country. On the contrary, we need to reduce ancillary wages. The model is also unusable for the current situation.
Why?
The union knows that we don’t have too much work, but too little. We still have 800,000 people in short-time work, who we want to employ again regularly so that they get a normal wage. It is a Trojan horse, a reduction in working hours through the back door at the expense of taxpayers and businesses. But if a company wants that, they can already make a corresponding company agreement.
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