The difficult attempts to reduce the limitation and fragmentation of workers' rights in home care policies during the pandemic in Germany

This paper is based on a series of interviews and document analysis, conducted in 2022-2023, on the policies for home care workers in Germany during the health crisis. It explores the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion (van Hooren 2018) mediated by the policies adopted and asks whether the crisis generated, accelerated or reversed the reforms. In particular, it examines the strategy of a trade union and an employers' association to negotiate a single collective agreement that could have covered all care workers, including those employed by for-profit organisations providing home care services, who were not covered by any collective agreement. It analyses the decision of Caritas, an organisation dependent on the Catholic Church, to reject this agreement and to assert the specific nature of church law. Finally, it analyses the attempts, still during the COVID Crisis, to circumvent the veto players by introducing a reform of long-term care that includes wage conditions for home care workers, and it questions the new lines of exclusion drawn by this instrument.