Philipp Jacks represents around 100,000 union members in the Frankfurt-Rhine-Main DGB region.

He is the full-time managing director of the region, which, in addition to Frankfurt, also includes the city of Wiesbaden and the districts of Main-Taunus, Hochtaunus, Rheingau-Taunus and Limburg-Weilburg.

He is also chairman of the Frankfurt City Association.

The German Trade Union Confederation is the umbrella organization of eight individual trade unions.

Daniel Schleidt

Coordinator of the economics department in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Mr. Jacks, looking ahead to 2023, how worried are you?

I hope that the drastic price increases will also be reflected in wage agreements.

It would be grossly unfair for workers to bear the brunt of this economic war.

A lot has happened recently in the catering trade and in the trades: Employers are realizing that they can only get skilled workers if they offer them appropriate working conditions.

I am also optimistic that the federal government has already taken measures that should cushion the worst consequences of the crisis, such as the energy price brake.

The already planned increase and easing of basic security and housing benefit comes at a fortunate time, but now has to be increased further in order to make the actually planned increase noticeable.

Do you have the feeling that the crisis is spreading evenly among everyone?

On the one hand, many people have money worries, on the other hand, restaurants are full or holiday trips are booming.

It hits hardest those who already have the least.

This extends to the middle class.

In Frankfurt we have the advantage that people have higher wages than the national average, but the extremely high cost of living causes difficulties for many.

Frankfurt is one of the cities with the highest rents and the most expensive public transport in Germany.

What do you wish?

We need the 49-euro ticket because it would help many commuters in one of the most expensive transport networks in Germany, especially in the Frankfurt area.

However, the federal and state governments have to adjust the grants again, because we hear from the RMV transport association that the commitments are not yet sufficient.

We cannot, on the one hand, set incentives for as many people as possible to use public transport and, on the other hand, question the financing, because the quality of the offer will suffer as a result.

And in housing policy?

Affordable housing for the urgently needed workers and trainees is the central topic in the region for 2023. We feel the shortage of workers on every corner.

We can only counteract this by offering affordable housing.

That is still lacking.

What is being built are often luxury apartments that are hardly affordable and are more aimed at investors.

That's why we need the new district on this side of the A5. The surrounding communities in the regional assembly are no longer allowed to oppose each other, and we can no longer use any new ideas in the election campaign that call into question a long-decided concept.

It annoys me that the CDU in Frankfurt is now bringing changes back into play that suddenly provide for more terraced and single-family houses.

Financially, this is exactly the opposite of

What we need: A skilled worker cannot afford a terraced house for 1.3 million euros.

But it is also climatically nonsense not to build densely.