Cooking, cleaning, caring for relatives and sick people, taking care of others, the environment and oneself – these activities are summarized in the English word “care”. Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie is hosting an online conference on this topic: "Care for Global Justice" from November 26 to 28, 2021. We spoke with Mia Smettan about the topic.
"The pandemic measures briefly put the spotlight on which jobs are truly relevant, that is, socially necessary," you wrote in the 4/2021 issue of agora42. What is the current situation? Have care workers been able to use the spotlight to promote their causes?
Unfortunately, the situation in nursing has worsened rather than improved in recent months. We are currently heading towards what is probably the most severe phase of the pandemic. Incidence rates are constantly reaching new highs, in some federal states there are only a few intensive care beds left, and in Munich, for example, hospitals are preparing for triage. This is an enormous psychological burden for the staff. For many months, they have had to cope with the lack of consistency in corona policy and the chronic underfunding of nursing. In April, a Survey of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine One-third of intensive care nurses surveyed said they intend to leave the profession in the next twelve months. Reports of great frustration and exhaustion among employees are increasing.
It is therefore all the more impressive that some of them are currently waging a bitter industrial dispute for more staff and better pay in hospitals. In six Bavarian cities, the ver.di union is calling for warning strikes in the healthcare sector. In Berlin, too, the "hospital movement" has been waging a very persistent industrial dispute together with ver.di since the beginning of the year, and it has been successful: In the city's two largest hospitals, employees are close to concluding a new collective bargaining agreement. However, this is less attributable to public attention to the crisis in the nursing sector than to the persistence and energy of care workers who, despite great pressure from management, are fighting for their rights to good working conditions.
The situation in unpaid care work remains precarious. In federal states with high incidence rates, daycare centers and schools must be closed again. Parents – and here, that still mostly means mothers – must then juggle paid work and childcare simultaneously. This leaves little time for the fight for social recognition of unpaid care work. Many people are simply exhausted.
The conference will also address colonial continuities in the globalized labor market in the care sector. How do these continuities manifest themselves?
Even during the colonial era, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) people were forced to perform devalued and invisible work such as care work. Often in extremely coercive and violent contexts, such as slavery. Even then, they worked as domestic workers for white, middle-class people.
In recent years, domestic work in Germany has increasingly been outsourced to female workers from the Global South and Eastern Europe. While white (house)wives with German citizenship have gained greater access to the labor market in recent decades, BIPOC women with fewer privileges continue to perform low-paid and invisible work.
The persistence of colonial structures in the care sector is also clearly evident in the working conditions of foreign nurses and domestic workers in Germany. To fill the nursing staffing gaps, Germany relies on nurses from abroad, for example, from Albania, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The Federal Republic of Germany maintains recruitment agreements with these countries. Foreign nurses and domestic workers often work for even lower pay than workers with German passports and with insecure employment contracts. Furthermore, their stay in Germany is usually dependent on employment, which creates a high level of dependence on their employer.
Do you have hope that the traffic light coalition will improve the situation in the care sector? What would your demands be to at least make a start?
Unfortunately, I have little hope that the new government will address the care work crisis. While small improvements to working conditions in care are being discussed, this doesn't address the core of the problem. Quite the opposite. With the FDP, a party entering government follows a radical market logic and relies on economic growth. This type of economics leads to a devaluation of care work and a shortage of time, since it is only marginally profitable.
We therefore demand a reduction of working hours to 30 hours for everyone, so that everyone has more time for unpaid care work. We also demand the socialization of hospitals and nursing facilities instead of further privatization for profit maximization. It is absurd to make the nursing sector profit-oriented. We must put human lives before profits and create good working conditions and opportunities for participation for nursing staff.
How would a care-centered economy differ from today's? Are there already approaches that offer promising prospects?
A care-centered economy would place the needs of people, nature, and all living beings at the center of economic activity—not profits. Here, the economy would be a means to the end of creating the necessities of life and achieving a good life for all. What we need for this is time and financial and social security. Therefore, reducing working hours, a universal basic income, free healthcare for all, affordable housing for all, and access to education for all are important steps in this direction.
There are projects that are pioneers of this change. Polyclinic Syndicate with houses in Leipzig, Berlin and Hamburg, for example, offers affordable healthcare for everyone and participates in tenant struggles.
These projects are important to show that things can be done differently! But that's not enough, of course. For fundamental change, we must move away from the dogma of economic growth and rethink the economy – as a tool for a good life for all.
Mia Smettan, thank you for the interview.
This interview was conducted by agora42.