US Senator Sanders pronounced on Monday that “in Scandinavia, and in Germany… The ideas that we am articulate about are not radical ideas.”
But how German are Sanders’ process ideas, and where would he distortion on a German domestic spectrum?
The Local motionless to review some of Sanders’ platforms to what indeed goes on in his idealized Bundesrepublik.
1. Raising a smallest wage
Photo: DPA.
Bernie’s proposal: Sanders wants to lift a sovereign smallest salary from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2020.
German reality: Given that a inhabitant smallest salary was only implemented final year in Germany, only a judgment of a sovereign smallest salary is a bit radikal in Deutschland. Still, a German smallest salary is set during €8.50 – that would be about $9.25 in a US and so $2 some-more an hour than a stream salary standard.
The smallest was put into a 2013 bloc agreement by a Social Democratic Party. But it is not renouned with pro-business politicians on a right of a coalition.
2. Equal compensate for equal work
Germany’s Families Minister Manuela Schwesig vocalization on Equal Pay Day. Photo: DPA.
Bernie’s proposal: Sanders wants to pass a Paycheck Fairness Act, that hopes to residence a gender compensate opening by punishing employers for retaliating opposite employees for pity information about how most they’re paid and permitting workers to sue for salary discrimination.
Estimates differ in a United States, though according to Pew Research Center, American women make 84 percent of what group do.
The stream bloc supervision of a regressive CDU and CSU parties with a centre-left SPD has concluded in element to tackle a emanate of a gender compensate gap.
Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth Manuela Schwesig is been pulling for a wage clarity law that would concede womanlike employees to check their salaries opposite those of masculine counterparts.
3. Tuition-free universities
Photo: Students during a University of Cologne. Photo: DPA.
Bernie’s proposal: Sanders wants to make open colleges and universities giveaway in a US and even uses Germany as an instance for because it’s not such a “radical idea.”
German reality: Each state or Bundesland is obliged for appropriation their universities. In 2005, a sovereign justice carried a anathema on fee fees, permitting states to start charging fees, some adult to €500 per semester. But this met with so most snub from a open that a states started rolling behind a fees, a final state doing so in 2014.
Students can still be asked to compensate certain fees that go towards things like a open travel pass and a tyro union, though these volume to only a few hundred euros, pale in comparison to a tens of thousands that American students pay.
4. Fighting for LGBT equality
Photo: DPA.
Bernie’s proposal: Sanders has several skeleton for how to encourage LGBT rights, one of that is to pass a law that would demarcate open agencies from cultured opposite intensity encourage or adoptive relatives formed on passionate course or gender identity.
German reality: While opinion polls competence demeanour otherwise, Germany indeed lags behind many of a western European counterparts in this area. Same sex matrimony is still not legal, and happy couples can't adopt a child together.
The Social Democrats are in foster of happy marriage, as are smaller severe parties, a Greens and Die Linke. But Merkel stays opposed.
5. Vacation, ill time and parental leave
Photo: DPA.
Bernie’s proposal: Sanders wants 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, 7 days of paid ill leave and 10 days of paid vacation per year.
German reality: Under German law, workers are entitled to a smallest of 24 days paid leave per year – not including open holidays, of that there are a decent number.
For ill leave, German law states that after you’ve worked somewhere for during slightest 4 weeks, we might continue to accept full salary for adult to 6 weeks if we are incompetent to work due to reasons over your control.
Women accept 6 weeks of paid maternity leave before giving birth and 8 weeks after a baby is born. Both group and women can also take parental leave adult until a child is three, though they are not paid by their employer. However, they are still guaranteed work with their employer thereafter and are paid a parental stipend by a state.
These laws are uncontentious and good determined upheld a categorical parties.
Conclusion: Sanders would ‘fit in well’
According to Professor Thomas Greven of a John F. Kennedy Institute in Berlin, Sander is a good fit for a left of German mainstream politics.
“Bernie Sanders is right,” Greven told The Local. “In Germany, he’d fit in good with a workers’ side of a SPD [Social Democratic Party].”
“Sanders is attempting to tie his judgment of ‘democratic socialism’ to a European gratification states to equivocate associations with Soviet socialism – that can be fatal in a American domestic discourse.”
Article source: http://www.thelocal.de/20160128/what-germany-would-think-of-bernie-sanders