# Karl-Josef Laumann

# Karl-Josef Laumann

Karl-Josef Laumann (born 11 July 1957 in Riesenbeck) is a German politician of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) and Minister for Labour, Health and Social Affairs of North Rhine-Westphalia. He has held that portfolio continuously since 30 June 2017, after a first term from 2005 to 2010. He was a full member of the German Bundesrat from 30 June 2005 to 15 July 2010 and has been a deputy member for the state since 30 June 2017, sitting on the committees for labour, integration and social policy, for family, senior citizens, women and youth, and for health. Since 2024 he has also been a deputy federal chairman of the CDU. The Bundesrat's member biography lists him as Roman Catholic, married, and the father of three children.

He trained as a machine fitter from 1974 to 1977 and worked in that trade from 1978 until he entered the Bundestag in 1990. He joined the CDU in 1974, was a member of the Hörstel town council from 1979 to 2004, and chaired the CDU in Kreis Steinfurt from 1986 to 2010. He remained in the Bundestag until 2005. A 2005 profile in *Der Tagesspiegel* described him as one of the few workers in parliament and as a labour-market specialist in the Union parliamentary group whose work was oriented toward employees' interests, and recorded that he had entered the CDU federal presidium at the end of 2004.

From 2005 to 2024 he was federal chairman of the Christlich-Demokratische Arbeitnehmerschaft, the CDU's workers' organisation, and from 2003 to 2024 he chaired the CDU's Münsterland district association. He sat in the North Rhine-Westphalia Landtag from 2005 to 2014 and led the CDU parliamentary group there from 2010 until 18 December 2013. On 8 January 2014 the federal cabinet appointed him the government's commissioner for patients' concerns and its plenipotentiary for long-term care, with the rank of state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Health then led by [Hermann Gröhe](/people/hermann-grohe). The Bundesrat dates that state-secretary appointment to 2014–2017.

He returned to the Düsseldorf cabinet on 30 June 2017 and re-entered the Landtag on 1 June 2022. In July 2020, during the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic), he told ZDF that contract work in the meat industry had to be banned after the outbreak at the Tönnies plants, and he said the North Rhine-Westphalia authorities would not voluntarily pay the company a cent in compensation for the forced closure. In October 2024 he argued for a lasting increase in Germany's statutory minimum wage, telling the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland that the independent Minimum Wage Commission had ignored inflation and workers' cost of living; the hourly rate then stood at €12.41.

## Early life and trade

### Family and schooling

Karl-Josef Laumann was born on 11 July 1957 in Riesenbeck, a village in the Steinfurt district of the Münsterland in North Rhine-Westphalia. In 1975 Riesenbeck became part of the town of Hörstel. He grew up in Birgte, an outlying settlement of Riesenbeck.

He and two brothers were raised on their parents' farm. His father was a farmer, and published profiles describe the household as conservative and Catholic; the Bundesrat lists Laumann himself as Roman Catholic. He has written that he wanted to become a farmer "like my father" but that "life had other plans." Munzinger states that an older brother took over the holding.

From 1968 to 1974 he attended the Harkenberg Hauptschule in Hörstel. A Rheinische Post portrait says he left with the Typ 10 A Hauptschulabschluss, the certificate then given in North Rhine-Westphalia after a tenth school year. The year is not uniform in the reference record: the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia dates the Hauptschulabschluss to 1973, and Munzinger to 1974.

### Apprenticeship and the works council

He trained as a Maschinenschlosser, a machine fitter, at Niemeyer, the agricultural-machinery manufacturer in Riesenbeck. Heinrich Niemeyer and his sons had started the firm in a village smithy in 1888, first making ploughs, hay rakes and tedders. It grew into a local industrial works; after later changes of ownership, manufacturing at Riesenbeck was discontinued in the 2000s.

The published dates of the apprenticeship differ by about a year. The Bundesrat records training from 1974 to 1977 and employment as a fitter from 1978 to 1990. The Landtag records training at Niemeyer from 1973 to 1976, work there as a fitter until 1990, and a 15-month break for compulsory military service. Laumann's own site says the apprenticeship began in 1973 and that he spent 17 years at the firm. A Bundestag biography from his years as a member, the Rheinische Post portrait and Munzinger all place his basic military service (Grundwehrdienst) in 1977–78, and Munzinger dates the Niemeyer job to 1978–1990.

During the apprenticeship he joined [IG Metall](/organizations/ig-metall). He later recalled that the local union branch was "pretty black" — the party colour of the Christian Democratic Union, which he joined in 1974. He was also elected to the plant works council. The Landtag dates that membership from 1976 to 1991; the Bundestag biography says he remained a member until 1991. In 2004 he told the *taz* that speaking relatively loudly "also has to do with my job. That is what happens when you have worked with iron for 17 years."

In 1990 he left the factory for the Bundestag. The parliamentary biography of that period still gave his occupation as machine fitter at Niemeyer in Riesenbeck and listed the union and works-council roles alongside it.

## Local politics and the Münsterland CDU

### Junge Union and the Hörstel council

Laumann joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1974 and, in 1977, its employees' association, the Christlich-Demokratische Arbeitnehmerschaft (CDA). From 1980 to 1986 he chaired the Junge Union, the CDU's youth organisation, in the district of Steinfurt. In September 2010 that association still described him as its honorary chairman.

He sat on the council of Hörstel, the town that includes his home locality of Riesenbeck, from 1979 to 2004. From October 1989 until 2001 he was chairman of the CDU group on the council. From 1986 to 1993 he also chaired the CDU branch in Riesenbeck.

### District and regional party offices

From January 2003 Laumann chaired the CDU Bezirksverband Münsterland, the regional party whose delegates come from the district associations of Borken, Coesfeld, Münster, Steinfurt and Warendorf. He did not stand again after 21 years. On the evening of 21 August 2024, at a conference in Senden, the delegates elected Jens Spahn of Ahaus, then a deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag, with 90.4 percent of 115 votes; the *Westfälische Nachrichten* reported the share as 90 percent of the votes cast. Spahn said he wanted closer links among the region's roughly 1,100 CDU office-holders before the 2025 municipal elections.

*Karl-Josef Laumann (right) and Jens Spahn at the CDU Münsterland conference in Senden on 21 August 2024.*

The Steinfurt chairmanship had begun much earlier. On 18 January 1986, at a district congress in Steinfurt-Burgsteinfurt, delegates elected Laumann over Alfred Wagner of Neuenkirchen by 153 votes to 64. Herbert Peuten had given up the chair, and the senior deputy, Reinhard Wolters, had carried the association through the preceding weeks. Laumann was then 28 and still chairman of the district Junge Union. He remained district chairman after entering the Bundestag in 1990. On 28 February 1998 a congress returned him with almost 98 percent of the vote. He reported that membership had risen by 319, to 6,262, of whom about 2,000 were workers and salaried employees, 760 civil servants, 720 farmers, 970 housewives and about 1,000 self-employed.

In September 2010 he told a Junge Union meeting in Greven that he would not run again, closing a tenure of nearly 25 years. On 5 November 2010, at a congress in Lienen, Christina Schulze Föcking — a farmer from Steinfurt and, since May, a member of the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament — was elected unopposed, with 160 votes in favour and four against. Laumann called her his successor. In his keynote he called the Steinfurt CDU a strong people's party, while putting its average age at 60.3 and the share of women at about 24 percent, and at 18.6 percent among office-holders. The state labour ministry dates his chairmanship of the Steinfurt CDU from 1986 to 2010.

## Bundestag, 1990–2005

### Elections and the Steinfurt seat

Laumann entered the Bundestag at the election of 2 December 1990, the first all-German federal election, as the directly elected member for constituency 98, Steinfurt II, in North Rhine-Westphalia. The CDU’s then direct candidate, Constantin Heereman von Zuydtwyck, urged him to stand after a meeting of the district executive. He received 79,137 valid first votes, 44.8 percent, against 74,684 (42.3 percent) for the Social Democratic Party; turnout was 81.3 percent of 219,756 people entitled to vote.

On 16 October 1994 the same constituency elected the SPD’s Reinhold Hemker. Laumann’s 82,128 votes (44.6 percent) fell 839 short of Hemker’s 82,967 (45.1 percent), and he remained in the House on the state list of the Christian Democratic Union. In 1998, with turnout at 85.5 percent, Hemker took 99,261 votes (50.3 percent) and Laumann 82,342 (41.7 percent). The Bundestag again recorded Laumann as elected from the North Rhine-Westphalian list, with constituency 98 as his seat.

The redistribution used on 22 September 2002 moved him to the new constituency 129, Steinfurt III: Emsdetten, Greven, Hörstel, Hopsten, Ibbenbüren, Ladbergen, Lengerich, Lienen, Lotte, Mettingen, Recke, Saerbeck, Tecklenburg and Westerkappeln, all in the Steinfurt district. Of 152,242 valid first votes, Hemker received 71,783 (47.1 percent) and Laumann 63,645 (41.8 percent), so Laumann once more entered by the state list. He thus sat in the 12th through the 15th electoral terms, the last of them only in part.

He resigned the mandate with effect from the end of 27 June 2005, and the state returning officer named Helmut Brandt, the next candidate on the CDU list, as his successor from 28 June. The resignation followed the state election of 22 May 2005, after which Jürgen Rüttgers nominated him as North Rhine-Westphalia’s minister for labour, health and social affairs.

### Labour and social policy in the Union group

A machine fitter and, until 1991, an IG Metall works-council member, Laumann concentrated his CDU/CSU work on labour and social questions. In the 13th electoral term, 1994–1998, the Bundestag listed him as a full member of the Committee on Labour and Social Order and as the group’s *Obmann* there, its designated lead, with deputy seats on the committees for food, agriculture and forestry and for defence.

During the 14th term his official biography named him chairman of the CDU/CSU *Arbeitnehmergruppe*, the parliamentary group’s employee formation. From March 2000 to October 2002 he also chaired the group’s working party on labour and social affairs and served as its social-policy spokesman. On 26 February 2002 he was the first signatory of a CDU/CSU motion, “Politik für mehr Beschäftigung statt organisationspolitischem Aktionismus”, attacking the labour-market course of Chancellor [Gerhard Schröder](/people/gerhard-schroder)’s government and calling for competition in placement, including private agencies, and fewer obstacles to temporary and low-paid work.

After the committees were redrawn for the 15th term, he chaired the working party on the economy and labour from October 2002 until he left the Bundestag. On 5 November 2002 he introduced, again as lead signatory, the group’s OFFENSIV bill, which would have combined placement, training and payment of unemployment assistance and social assistance for people able to work in single “Vermittlungsagenturen”, and would have tied those benefits to taking work or training. The CDU/CSU later voted in the Bundestag and the Bundesrat for the Fourth Act on Modern Services in the Labour Market, known as Hartz IV. In *Blickpunkt Bundestag* of 18 October 2004 Laumann wrote that he stood by that vote: merging the two assistance schemes, which the group had already demanded in the previous term, was meant to shift the system from maintaining people toward returning them to work, through easier rules on extra earnings, a personal caseworker and sanctions for refusing a job, with recipients given access to the placement measures of the Federal Employment Agency.

## State minister and opposition leader, 2005–2013

### The Rüttgers cabinet

After the North Rhine-Westphalia election of 22 May 2005, when the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took 44.8 per cent of the second votes, Karl-Josef Laumann became minister for labour, health and social affairs in Jürgen Rüttgers’ cabinet. The Rheinische Post called him the new labour minister on 29 June 2005. He entered the Landtag only on 4 August 2005 and sat until 28 January 2014; this term in the ministry lasted until 2010.

In September 2005 he put the missing apprenticeship places at more than 25,000—about 35,000 seekers and 10,000 offers—and proposed extra training days for unemployed youths then in vocational school only twice a week. On the federal Hartz rules he wanted the long-term unemployed transferred to the municipalities, benefit duration tied to contribution years, and no cuts where no job was available.

The 2007 hospital bill replaced selective building grants with an annual lump sum for every hospital, scaled to casemix points. Laumann called it a *Krankenhausfreiheitsgesetz*; the state hospital association called the plan discussable but a switch made *im Blindflug*. At the St. Antonius clinic in Wegberg, prosecutors investigated the chief for negligent homicide after a report of at least 19 patients wrongly treated, six deaths, and lemon juice used as a disinfectant. Laumann said that if the operator did not control the organisation, nobody should be treated there, and asked whether public-order law could close the house faster than removal from the hospital plan.

Smoke-free rules split the ministry in 2008. After the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) allowed exceptions for one-room pubs of up to 75 square metres, Rüttgers rejected a total ban and said Laumann would draft an amendment within weeks. State secretary Stefan F. Winter, a physician, resigned in protest; the state chancellery confirmed his letter in August 2008.

### Landtag leadership after 2010

On 9 May 2010 the CDU fell to 34.6 per cent, a tenth of a point ahead of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) on 34.5; Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) took 12.1 per cent, the Free Democratic Party 6.7 and the Left 5.6. Turnout was 59.3 per cent, and the government lost its majority. On 6 July in Düsseldorf the 67-member CDU group elected Laumann chairman by 34 votes to 32 for Armin Laschet, with one abstention. Laumann, federal chairman of the CDU employees’ wing, said he would defend the *Gymnasium* “with all constitutional means” against what he called the state’s most left-wing government ever.

*Armin Laschet and Karl-Josef Laumann at a CDU event during their joint leadership of the North Rhine-Westphalia party.*

The opposition also bargained. In July 2011 Laumann, state chairman [Norbert Röttgen](/people/norbert-rottgen), Minister-President Hannelore Kraft and school minister Sylvia Löhrmann agreed a twelve-year compromise: a *Sekundarschule* for years 5 to 10, without its own upper stage, and no constitutional guarantee for the *Hauptschule*. Laumann said that excluded a single comprehensive school; Kraft said both sides had conceded ground.

The budget ended the minority government. Laumann called the draft dishonest and finance minister Norbert Walter-Borjans the cabinet’s least capable member, citing a missing billion euros of liable capital for the WestLB, and the CDU demanded about two billion euros in cuts and at least 12,000 fewer posts. On 14 March 2012 the government fell and the Landtag moved to dissolve itself, requiring an election within 60 days; Kraft said the CDU’s refusal left no basis for a grand coalition.

On 13 May 2012 the CDU won 26.3 per cent, the SPD 39.1, the Greens 11.3, the FDP 8.6 and the [Pirate Party](/organizations/pirate-party) 7.8; the Left, on 2.5 per cent, left the Landtag. Turnout was 59.6 per cent. Red-green held 128 of 237 seats and the CDU 67. Lead candidate Röttgen said he would resign as state chairman. On 3 July Laumann was re-elected group chairman with 52 of 64 votes, eleven against and one abstention. Laschet, confirmed as state chairman the previous weekend with 77.6 per cent, shared the leadership with him. The state government dates his chairmanship to 18 December 2013. He resigned his seat on 28 January 2014 to become a state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Health and federal commissioner for patients and long-term care.

## Federal patient and care commissioner, 2013–2017

### Appointment in the grand coalition

On 8 January 2014 the cabinet of the third Merkel government, the CDU–CSU–SPD coalition, appointed Karl-Josef Laumann federal commissioner for patients' interests and plenipotentiary for care, with the rank of a state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Health. The ministry called the combined office newly created; Health Minister Hermann Gröhe introduced him on 13 January. He had chaired the CDU group in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, had helped negotiate the coalition's care chapters, and succeeded Wolfgang Zöller of the CSU, patient commissioner since 2009. He resigned his Landtag seat on 28 January 2014. The Bundesrat records him for 2014–2017 as a civil-service state secretary in both roles.

Under section 140h of Book V of the Social Code the federal government appoints the patient commissioner, provides staff, and must involve the office in laws and other important projects affecting patients' rights. The brief is to press for independent advice and objective information, a voice in questions of medical provision, and a plain-language statement of patient rights; the appointment ends, unless ended sooner by dismissal, when a new Bundestag meets. The care plenipotentiary had no such clause and was attached by the cabinet to the ministry post.

In September 2015 Laumann and the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds defended giving the Independent Patient Counselling Service, from January 2016, to Sanvartis GmbH, a Duisburg call-centre that also worked for sickness funds and drug companies. Board members Marie-Luise Dierks and Rolf Rosenbrock resigned, saying neutrality had not been shown. Maria Klein-Schmeink of Alliance 90/The Greens, Karin Vogler of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) and Frank Ulrich Montgomery of the German Medical Association accused Laumann and the funds of discarding an independent critic. Laumann said the law required tendering, that a non-profit company, an auditor and board powers would protect independence, and that the federal procurement chamber had upheld the award.

He left both offices on becoming minister for labour, health and social affairs in North Rhine-Westphalia again on 30 June 2017. On 5 July the cabinet named parliamentary state secretary Ingrid Fischbach his successor; Gröhe thanked Laumann, who urged her to keep patients and people needing care at [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) of the system.

### Long-term care reform

The legislative centre of his federal term was social long-term care insurance. The Second Act to Strengthen Long-Term Care, passed on 13 November 2015 by the Union and the SPD, replaced three care levels with five care grades from 1 January 2017 and measured need by degree of independence, so that cognitive and mental impairment, including dementia, counted equally with physical limitation.

Ministers expected up to 500,000 more claimants, with no loss for people already entitled, and a contribution rise of 0.2 points on 1 January 2017 to 2.55 per cent (2.8 per cent for people without children), about five billion euros a year. Most of the act took effect at the start of 2016 and did not need Bundesrat consent. From late 2014 Laumann promoted shorter care documentation; the act forbade using the time saved to cut staff.

The first act, passed on 17 October 2014, raised benefits from 1 January 2015 by about 1.4 billion euros a year at home and about 1 billion in homes, increased care assistants in homes from 25,000 to 45,000, and added a ten-day paid break to organise a relative's care. The contribution rate rose 0.3 points, to 2.35 per cent (2.6 per cent without children); 0.1 points, about 1.2 billion euros a year from 2015 to 2033, went into a demographic reserve. Gröhe called the act the path to the new definition, then being tried on about 4,000 people.

Die Linke voted against the second act and the Greens abstained. Pia Zimmermann warned of higher residential co-payments and poverty; Elisabeth Scharfenberg said staff were already at their limit and that financing and a staffing standard were not secure. The coalition answered that equal access for dementia justified developing that standard only by 2020.

The third act extended the new definition to social assistance, strengthened municipal advice and tightened checks after billing fraud. At the Bundestag hearing, disability groups opposed care benefits taking precedence over integration assistance, capped at 266 euros a month, and municipalities called the social-assistance costs underestimated.

## Minister for labour, health and social affairs since 2017

### The Laschet and Wüst cabinets

Karl-Josef Laumann has been Minister for Labour, Health and Social Affairs of North Rhine-Westphalia continuously since 30 June 2017, when Minister-President Armin Laschet appointed him in the new state cabinet—a portfolio he had already held from 2005 to 2010. That cabinet also included [Hendrik Wüst](/people/hendrik-wust) as transport minister and Joachim Stamp as deputy minister-president, in the Christian Democratic Union–Free Democratic Party government. Since that day he has been a deputy member of the Bundesrat for the state, on its labour, family and health committees; he had been a full member from 30 June 2005 to 15 July 2010.

He sat in the Landtag from 2005 to 2014 and again from 1 June 2022. At the state election on 15 May 2022 he won constituency 82, Steinfurt III, with 43.9 percent of the first votes, ahead of the Social Democratic Party on 32.0 percent. The Landtag elected Wüst minister-president on 27 October 2021. The next day he reappointed the sitting ministers, Laumann among them, and named Ina Brandes transport minister. After the 2022 election the CDU and Alliance 90/The Greens agreed a coalition. Wüst was re-elected on 28 June 2022 and on 29 June appointed the new ministers, again including Laumann, in Düsseldorf; the Landtag then swore them in. The ministry called the period his third term in the post.

### Hospitals, the nursing chamber and labour inspection

The main hospital project has been a plan that assigns care by defined service groups (*Leistungsgruppen*) rather than by beds. The procedure closed in December 2024, when each hospital was told which services it could keep.

From 1 April 2025, hospitals may offer 54 of 64 groups only if the plan assigns them; ten high-volume or emergency groups, including cardiology, stroke care and joint replacement, had until 31 December 2025. Assignments ran well below applications for specialised work: 136 of 214 for knee replacement, 137 of 236 for hips, 29 of 113 for liver cancer and 26 of 71 for oesophageal cancer, while general medicine, surgery and intensive care were granted almost wherever hospitals applied. The ministry said 98.6 percent of people in the Rhineland and 93.1 percent in Westphalia-Lippe could still reach internal medicine and surgery within 20 minutes by car, and it set aside about €2.5 billion for the restructuring. By 31 March 2025 it counted 93 lawsuits and 44 urgent applications, mostly over single groups, against about 6,200 decisions; suits have no suspensive effect, and 24 of 31 first-instance urgent rulings had gone against the hospitals. The *Rheinische Post* reported a slightly earlier Landtag figure of 94 suits from 89 of 319 hospitals. SPD health spokesman Thorsten Klute said that share, and what he called inadequate transition funding, showed real opposition. Laumann answered that more than 80 percent of hospitals had not sued and that most suits concerned oncology or orthopaedics.

On nursing, Laumann argued for a chamber with compulsory membership, on the model of the medical chambers. A survey of 1,503 nurses in October and November 2018 found that 86 percent wanted some representation—59 percent a chamber only, 7 percent only a voluntary ring and 20 percent both. On 9 January 2019 he treated the chamber-only and combined shares as one result and said 79 percent wanted a chamber, offering €5 million to set it up. The Landtag passed the establishing law on 24 June 2020 with the votes of the CDU, the FDP and the Greens; an SPD motion to withdraw the bill failed. Membership for qualified nurses is compulsory. In August 2026 WDR, citing the health ministry, reported about 260,000 such nurses and 124,000 completed registrations, a €20 annual fee, up to 35,000 payment reminders, and €30 million in state support through the end of 2027. The ministry called the chamber a step toward parity with other healing professions. A petition by nurse Monika Sonnenberg drew 20,000 signatures in six months; she called the chamber a fig leaf unable to sanction employers or politics, while nurse Anja Kuczera said it overlooked bedside work. Chamber speaker Leonie Podday said the criticism was legitimate but easing.

Labour inspection sits in the same ministry. Using Laumann’s 2025 report to the Landtag, the *Rheinische Post* wrote that the inspectorate had fallen from 1,173 staff in the early 2000s to 834 full-time equivalents despite 100 added posts, with 420 inspectors for about 777,000 firms. In 2024 systematic checks covered 2.8 percent of relevant firms, short of a legal target of 5 percent a year from 2026, in about 15,700 visits. Of nearly 3,000 complaints, about 20 percent were fully and 26 percent partly upheld. The ministry said scarce staff were being steered toward precarious sectors. SPD labour spokeswoman Lena Teschlade said the report showed fewer inspectors, many violations and no plan for what followed.

## Pandemic response and the meat industry

### COVID-19 in North Rhine-Westphalia

As minister for labour, health and social affairs, Laumann was the North Rhine-Westphalia government's main public voice on the COVID-19 pandemic beside Minister President Armin Laschet of the CDU. The first confirmed infection in the state was announced on 26 February 2020: a man from the district of Heinsberg had been admitted with severe pneumonia to a hospital in Erkelenz. The district closed schools and kindergartens the next day, and Laumann said that further chains of transmission had to be expected after the first cases in Bavaria. On 27 March the state paid for a four-week study of that cluster under the virologist Hendrik Streeck, which Laumann backed as a way to slow the virus.

Meat plants followed. On 8 May Laumann announced a temporary closure of a Westfleisch slaughterhouse in Coesfeld after the district reported 129 infections among workers, 13 of them in hospital, and a seven-day incidence of 52.7. Workers at every slaughterhouse in the state were to be tested and shared accommodation checked. A wider count put infections in German slaughterhouses above 600. The ministry had already inspected the industry: from July to September 2019 it examined 30 large plants, about 90 contract firms and roughly 17,000 jobs and recorded 8,752 breaches, 5,863 of them against working-time law. Laumann called that result incompatible with a social state of Christian roots.

### The Tönnies outbreak and contract labour

On 17 June 2020 the district of Gütersloh ordered the Tönnies slaughter operation in Rheda-Wiedenbrück closed at once after mass testing. By evening 657 of 983 results were positive, and district administrator Sven-Georg Adenauer said about 7,000 people who had worked on the site were affected. He and Laumann ruled out a general lockdown that day, but schools and day-care centres were to close from 18 to 26 June.

By 23 June more than 1,500 employees had tested positive. Laumann said some 7,000 people were in quarantine and that the district was already "in the middle of a lockdown", and that slaughterhouse owners needed a legal duty for the workers who slaughtered and cut. The same day Laschet restored March-style contact rules for the district's roughly 365,000 residents until 30 June; only 24 infections had been found among people who did not work for the firm. From 25 June free tests were offered in Gütersloh and Warendorf, at least until 3 July, to see whether the virus had left the workforce.

When the plant restarted on 16 July, after about four weeks and roughly 1,400 infections in the workforce, Laumann said contract work in the meat industry had to be banned and that North Rhine-Westphalia would not voluntarily pay Tönnies a cent. He was waiting on bills from federal labour minister Hubertus Heil of the SPD; the cabinet had agreed a ban by 1 January at the latest, and he argued the closure had also been an administrative order. On 29 July the cabinet adopted Heil's bill: outside staff were barred from the core business, contracts from 1 January 2021 and temporary agency work from 1 April 2021, except in butcher's shops with up to 49 people, with digital time recording and higher fines. In the Bundestag debate reported on 16 December, Heil called the pre-pandemic conditions a scandal. Slaughter and cutting were covered in full; processing kept bargained exceptions for agency labour for three years, and the law was to take effect on 1 January 2021.

Laschet said the conditions had long been known, blamed earlier red-green governments for the contracts, and said only Laumann had pressed for change. [Felix Banaszak](/people/felix-banaszak), then state chair of Alliance 90/The Greens, replied that Laschet's government was responsible for labour inspection in Gütersloh. Former agriculture minister [Renate Künast](/people/renate-kunast) called the deregulation claim false. In December 2024 the Land settled the remaining lawsuits by paying €3.2 million into a trust for workers in difficult conditions; Tönnies dropped more than 1,000 actions.

## Social-policy positions

### The statutory minimum wage

Before the November 2011 congress of the Christian Democratic Union in Leipzig, Laumann, chair of its workers' association, the Christlich-Demokratische Arbeitnehmerschaft, canvassed branches for a binding minimum wage where no collective agreement applied. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* reported resistance from the economic wing over temporary-agency pay and exceptions. The leadership compromised: employers and unions, not the Bundestag, would set a generally binding floor, with regional or sectoral exceptions still possible. Laumann told delegates he came from a farm and that there came a point when "Jetzt bind' ich den Sack zu". The motion passed with few votes against. The Free Democratic Party stayed opposed, so nothing was yet law.

A statutory €8.50 an hour began on 1 January 2015, with later changes left to that commission. In the North Rhine-Westphalia Landtag in June 2023 he welcomed the rise to €12 and said a main job that did not cover living costs was unacceptable. The commission then recommended, against the unions, €12.41 from January 2024 and €12.82 from 2025. The unions called it a real-wage loss for nearly six million workers and wanted at least €13.50. Hubertus Heil of the Social Democratic Party said he would implement the recommendation rather than allow no rise. Employers rejected Heil's call for €14 to €15 within two years as interference.

In October 2023 Laumann called the commission "eine Katastrophe" and the increase "ein Witz", and proposed at least 60 per cent of the median and 50 per cent of the average wage, about €14 by the end of 2024. On 15 October 2024, with the rate at €12.41, he told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland that the commission had ignored inflation and living conditions, and that a higher minimum was "völlig unstrittig". He refused another Bundestag number, warning of a bidding contest, and asked that 60 per cent of the full-time gross median be written into the Minimum Wage Act. The European Union directive requires a transparent method and names that share as one benchmark, not a compulsory rate.

### Basic income support and activation

In December 2023 he opposed CDU and FDP calls to cancel the planned rise in the Bürgergeld standard rate: an adjustment was urgent, he told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland, because false incentives had discouraged work. Since 2019 he has wanted benefits tied to cooperation. In 2024 his ministry told the *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* that anyone who does not recognisably help to end their own need, including by refusing reasonable work, should receive nothing.

The Federal Constitutional Court held on 5 November 2019 that a 30 per cent cut can be constitutional, but that deeper cuts and a complete withdrawal after repeated breaches were, on the evidence then available, incompatible with the Basic Law. In 2025 his government told the Landtag that the judgment still allowed total withdrawal for wilful refusal of livelihood-securing work, and he called the rule in force since spring 2024 bureaucratic and barely used. Job centres, he said, had to concentrate on placement; about a third of appointments were missed and that could not be tolerated. Lena Teschlade, the SPD's labour spokesperson, said he was stirring resentment that hit the wrong people in 99 per cent of cases. In *Herder Korrespondenz* that October he wrote that solidarity was no one-way street and that support and requirement had to be balanced "im besten Sinne des Subsidiaritätsprinzips".

### Christian social teaching

He presents that balance as Catholic social teaching. In 2021 he said social insurance, which he traced to that teaching, had shielded people in the pandemic, and that firms with social partnership had come through more strongly. In June 2023 he told domradio.de that faith underlay his politics through dignity, freedom, solidarity and subsidiarity. For the Hans Böckler Foundation he recalled 17 years as a machine fitter and joining IG Metall as an apprentice, and treated stronger works councils as part of his task as minister: such firms, he wrote, weather crises better, and a share in decisions protects against anti-democratic attitudes. Collective bargaining, on the Leipzig formula, remains how wages are normally set; the statutory floor is for the margin those agreements do not cover.

## CDA chairmanship and CDU leadership

### Nineteen years at the CDA

The Christlich-Demokratische Arbeitnehmerschaft (CDA) is the social-policy wing of the Christian Democratic Union and one of eight associations (*Vereinigungen*) named in the party statute. On its own account it speaks for employees and their families inside the CDU, stands close to Christian employee associations and the trade unions, and treats social partnership, rather than class conflict, as the answer to the social question. The party describes the CDA as a guardian of Christian social teaching on pensions, employment policy, workplace health and long-term care; the association traces that tradition to the nineteenth-century Christian social movement and to Catholic social teaching, and counts Jakob Kaiser, Hans Katzer and Norbert Blüm among its earlier federal chairs.

Laumann was elected to lead the CDA on 25 June 2005 at its congress in Bonn-Bad Godesberg, receiving 92.84 percent of the vote. The chair had been vacant since December 2004, when Hermann-Josef Arentz resigned after a salary arrangement with the energy company RWE; Gerald Weiß, chair of the Union employees' group in the Bundestag, had held it on an interim basis. Laumann had just taken office as labour minister of North Rhine-Westphalia. He remained federal chairman until 2024, a span the state government records as 2005 to 2024 and which contemporary reports described as nineteen years.

He did not stand again at the CDA congress in Weimar. On 14 September 2024 the delegates elected Dennis Radtke, until then a deputy CDA chairman, with 83.1 percent of the valid votes, and chose Laumann as honorary chairman. Laumann said he was not retiring and would go on working on the situation of employees as a CDU deputy chairman and as minister in North Rhine-Westphalia.

### Deputy federal chairman

On 6 May 2024, at the CDU's 36th federal party congress in Berlin, delegates elected Laumann as one of five deputy federal chairmen. The official result was 880 votes, or 91.95 percent, the highest share among the five; the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* reported it the same day as 91.9 percent and as the strongest of those results.

He had sat on the federal presidium since the December 2004 congress in Düsseldorf, where he succeeded [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) with 83.8 percent. The North Rhine-Westphalia government biography records uninterrupted presidium membership from that year. In the 2025 coalition talks between the CDU/CSU and the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany), *Deutsches Ärzteblatt* reported that Laumann would lead the CDU side of working group 6, on health and long-term care, with Katja Pähle leading for the SPD and [Stephan Pilsinger](/people/stephan-pilsinger) for the CSU.

## Elections

### Federal contests

At the [1990 German federal election](/facts/1990-german-federal-election), on 2 December, Karl-Josef Laumann won a direct mandate for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Bundestag constituency 98, Steinfurt II. The CDU took 44.8 percent of the first votes and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) 42.3 percent, with turnout at 81.3 percent.

In the same constituency at the [1994 German federal election](/facts/1994-german-federal-election), SPD candidate Reinhold Hemker won the seat with 45.1 percent to Laumann’s 44.6 percent; turnout was 83.2 percent. Laumann nevertheless entered the Bundestag on the CDU state list for North Rhine-Westphalia. At the [1998 German federal election](/facts/1998-german-federal-election) Hemker was again directly elected, with 50.3 percent to 41.7 percent for the CDU, and the Bundestag recorded Laumann as returned for the constituency by the state list. Turnout was 85.5 percent.

A redistribution moved him, for the [2002 German federal election](/facts/2002-german-federal-election), to constituency 129, Steinfurt III, covering Emsdetten, Greven, Hörstel, Hopsten, Ibbenbüren, Ladbergen, Lengerich, Lienen, Lotte, Mettingen, Recke, Saerbeck, Tecklenburg and Westerkappeln in the Steinfurt district. Hemker held the direct seat with 47.2 percent to 41.8 percent, on a turnout of 83.0 percent, and Laumann was again elected from the state list. He laid the mandate down at the end of 27 June 2005. The state returning officer named Helmut Brandt, of Alsdorf, as his successor from the CDU list with effect from 28 June 2005, before that autumn’s federal election.

### State contests in Steinfurt

For the Landtag election of 22 May 2005 the CDU placed Laumann fourth on its state list. He was not initially returned. He entered in place of Hans Peter Lindlar, who had been appointed president of the Cologne government region, and the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia records the mandate as running from 4 August 2005 until 28 January 2014.

On 9 May 2010 he won constituency 82, Steinfurt II, with 50.4 percent of the valid first votes (33,028). Elisabeth Veldhues, the SPD candidate, took 34.4 percent (22,565). Turnout was 60.4 percent. At the election of 13 May 2012, in the same constituency, he won again with 45.1 percent (30,582) to Veldhues’s 36.3 percent (24,624), and turnout was 62.1 percent. The district authority reported that the SPD had filled all of its seats by direct mandate, so Veldhues was not seated from the state list.

He was outside the Landtag from 28 January 2014. At the 2017 election Frank Sundermann of the SPD held constituency 83, Steinfurt III, with 40.7 percent of the first votes to 39.7 percent for the CDU; turnout was 63.7 percent. On 15 May 2022, in the renumbered constituency 82, Steinfurt III — Hopsten, Ibbenbüren, Lengerich, Lienen, Lotte, Mettingen, Recke, Tecklenburg and Westerkappeln — Laumann, whose home is Hörstel-Riesenbeck in the neighbouring Steinfurt II, stood against the incumbent Sundermann. The final count of the [2022 state election](/facts/2022-north-rhine-westphalia-state-election) gave Laumann 27,754 first votes, 43.9 percent, and Sundermann 20,245, 32.0 percent, with turnout at 56.4 percent. The Landtag records him as a member again from 1 June 2022.

## Personal life and public standing

### Family, faith and associations

The German Bundesrat lists Karl-Josef Laumann as born on 11 July 1957 in Riesenbeck, Roman Catholic, married and the father of three children. The North Rhine-Westphalia government biography repeats that he is married with three children. On his own site he writes that he grew up on his parents' farm in Riesenbeck-Birgte with two brothers and still lives there, and that the parish milieu, altar service and later Catholic associations shaped him, which is why the Katholische Arbeitnehmer-Bewegung (KAB) and Kolping matter to him. The CDU group in the state parliament lists membership of the Kolping Society (Kolpingwerk) and of the KAB, and also of IG Metall, with a works-council seat at the farm-machinery firm Niemeyer until 1990.

A declaration under section 7, sentence 1, of the state's anti-corruption law, dated 29 April 2025, shows no consultancy contracts and no supervisory-board seats. It names him as a member of the shareholders' meeting of Krankenhausbetriebsgesellschaft Bad Oeynhausen mbH, operator of the Heart and Diabetes Centre NRW in Bad Oeynhausen, and of Virtuelles Krankenhaus NRW gGmbH, marked as in liquidation. In associations it lists a seat on the foundation council of the Deutsche AIDS-Stiftung, the chairmanship of the Nordrhein-Westfälische Stiftung zur Förderung der Leprahilfe, and membership of the board of trustees of the Stiftung Industriedenkmalpflege und Geschichtskultur. The AIDS foundation says members of its bodies serve without pay, except the managing chair of the executive board.

### Awards and reputation

On 17 November 2016 Minister-President Hannelore Kraft conferred the Order of Merit of North Rhine-Westphalia on Laumann, of Hörstel-Riesenbeck, and 16 others at a Düsseldorf reception for the state's 70th anniversary and the order's 30th year. Living holders of the order are limited to 2,500. On 3 February 2006 the Informationsdienst Ruhr, citing the press office of the Diocese of Essen, reported that the Heinrich Brauns Prize, given every two years for service to Catholic social teaching, would go jointly to Laumann, then state minister for labour and social affairs, and Ludwig Ladzinski, chair of the general works council of Deutsche Steinkohle AG. Bishop Felix Genn was to present the prize, worth 5,000 euros, on 11 March in Mülheim an der Ruhr, with a laudation by Bundestag president [Norbert Lammert](/people/norbert-lammert).

A 2011 portrait in Die Zeit, "Der Mindestlohn-Flüsterer", presented the machinist and then federal chair of the CDU employees' association (CDA) as the figure pressing the party toward a statutory minimum wage, and as something like the CDU's social conscience. In June 2020 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung headed a profile "Poltern für die soziale Sache", on his blunt manner toward the Tönnies company during a coronavirus outbreak at its plant in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. Commenting for WDR on 9 December 2022, Christoph Ullrich wrote that hardly any conservative had devoted his political work so much to social justice as "der bodenständige Münsterländer" (the down-to-earth man from the Münsterland).

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/karl-josef-laumann