Erfurt (dpa/th) – The left-wing parliamentary group is pushing for better protection of employees from mental stress. If there are no improved legal regulations at federal level in the near future, Thuringia must go ahead with its own state requirements, demanded the spokeswoman for the parliamentary group for labor and trade union policy, Lena Saniye Güngör, on Thursday in Erfurt.
With a Thuringian anti-stress ordinance, for example, the occupational safety authorities could be authorized to check whether a company pays attention to the protection of employees from mental stress. “I don’t believe in always pointing to the waistband,” she said.
It is important to close gaps in federal labor law to protect against stress at work as soon as possible, said Güngör. However, this has been discussed at the federal level for years without anything having really improved. With its own state ordinance, Thuringia could therefore also gain a locational advantage in the competition between the states for skilled workers.
The parliamentary group had commissioned a report on how the most recent changes in the world of work are affecting mental stress. “The rapid spread of the home office in the context of the corona pandemic was accompanied by regulatory gaps that must now be closed by a binding legal framework in the field of mobile work,” says the paper, which was written by a sociologist from the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main and a sociologist from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.
