Sunday, January 3, 2010
BERLIN (AFP) - – German courts are investigating 132 businesses over suspected fraud in the short-time working programme put in place by the government to protect jobs, the weekly Spiegel will report Monday.
The "Kurzarbeit" scheme allows firms hit by recession to cut costs by keeping staff at home or shortening their but without having to fire them.
The state pays up to 67 percent of a worker's salary for a period of up to two years, and over one million workers are covered by the scheme.
The Federal Labour Agency had found 856 suspected cases following a provisional assessment and after further checks, 132 cases were passed to prosecutors, according to Spiegel.
Eighty percent of the cases related to businesses with less than 100 employees.
The short-time working programme has allowed Germany to limit the waves of redundancy during the economic downturn.
In November 2009, German unemployment dipped to 7.6 percent of the workforce.
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