Losing Your Religion Can Also Mean Losing Your Livelihood

Muriel Fraser reveals the stranglehold that the churches have on employment in Germany

Last month a German court upheld the denial of benefits to a long-term employee who lost her job at a Catholic hospital because she left the Church.

She was fired a few days after she withdrew her name from the Church membership list – and thereby from the church-tax rolls – and after she made it clear that she could not be persuaded to return. In addition, her right to benefits was denied for a period of twelve weeks.

The Civil Court of the Rheinland and Palatinate decided that she had only herself to blame for losing her job. Accordingly, they withheld benefits, citing a new law designed to prevent illegal work and tax fraud. It denies benefits to those who lose their jobs “deliberately or with wanton negligence”. After all, the court argued, she should have known when she took the job many years before that she would lose it if she ever left the Church. Therefore, to allow her to receive benefits would have threatened the “functional capability” of the German welfare system which is “constitutionally linked to the principle of the social state”. Furthermore, it was an “open question” whether this whole matter had anything to do with “religious freedom”. Tellingly, they referred to her claim as an attempt to exercise merely “negative” religious freedom.

The court also argued that, knowing she’d be fired, she should have lined up a new job while still in the old one. How she was to have carried out this recommendation was not discussed in the ruling.

Now, despite her long years of service, she is no longer qualified for employment in any of Germany’s church-run hospitals. This is a serious handicap, as “faith-based” institutions control more than a third of the hospital beds despite the fact that the churches only contribute 1.8% of the hospital budget and the taxpayers give the rest.

She also finds herself in a very tight job market. This January over 12% of the German labour force was officially jobless, almost three times the rate for the UK. The actual numbers are believed to be far higher than the official total of 5 million unemployed, since the German government only counts those who have registered with its employment agency. Such is the jobless rate in Germany that with a staff of almost 100,000, the Employment Service is the largest government department – which makes it one of the country’s main employers.

This situation forces many Germans to retain their church membership – and pay “church tax” every year – because they feel trapped. They are caught between the preponderance of “faith-based” employers on the one hand, and high unemployment on the other. To add insult to injury, they also face the prospect of becoming outcasts. Judgements like this warn them that if they try to exercise their “negative” religious freedom, they risk contravening “the principle of the social state”. For sound historical reasons, Germans in general, and the non-religious in particular, are very anxious to avoid being targeted as a threat to society – as what was once termed “social vermin”.

Back in 1992 the German union of public servants (ÖTV) observed that “It is striking how the churches with the help of the Constitutional Court have recently begun a policy of limiting the rights of their employees, now that there are continually 2 million unemployed in the job market”. Today, with 5 million jobless, the faith-based employers are in an even stronger position.

Religious organisations may tread softly in times of full employment, but once there’s an economic downturn they seize their chance. They know that their employees are trapped and that they must submit without a murmur to more interference in their private lives than other church members would tolerate. In terms of individual freedom, faith-based social services can prove to be a time bomb.