1. Wolfgang-Hubertus Ernst Ulrich Heil was born on 3 November 1972 and is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party who has been serving as Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs in the fourth cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel and the first cabinet of Chancellor Olaf Scholz since 14 March 2018.
In September 2009, after immense losses for the SPD during the German federal election, Heil announced his resignation from this position for November.
Hubertus Heil was born in Hildesheim in 1972 as son of a teacher.
From 1995 to 1997, Hubertus Heil was the assistant of Heidrun Forster, a member of the Brandenburg State Parliament and in 1998 assistant of Eva Folta, a member of the Bundestag.
From 1995 to 1997 Hubertus Heil was executive director of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Arbeitnehmerfragen, a leftist caucus in the SPD, representing the workers' wing of the party, although he was reputed to belong to the undogmatical reform socialist wing during his Juso time.
Today Hubertus Heil serves as chairman of the SPD in Braunschweig.
Hubertus Heil has been a member of the Bundestag since the 1998 German elections, representing the electoral district of Gifhorn-Peine.
Hubertus Heil was elected new secretary general of the SPD, but he received only 61.2 percent of the votes, about 20 percent less than his predecessor Klaus Uwe Benneter.
Hubertus Heil later served under Platzeck as well as under his successors Kurt Beck and Muntefering.
Between 2009 and 2017, Hubertus Heil served as deputy chairman of the SPD's parliamentary group, under the leadership of successive chairmen Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Thomas Oppermann, the first four years in the opposition and the other four as a government party.
Hubertus Heil was an advisory member of the Commission for Fundamental Values of the executive committee of the SPD, a body led by Gesine Schwan.
In that capacity Hubertus Heil organised the campaign and contributed to the manifesto of Schulz.
Since becoming Minister of Labour and Social Affairs when the SPD joined the fourth Merkel cabinet in a grand coalition following the 2017 German federal election, Hubertus Heil has overseen a number of legal measures to strengthen workers' rights, including a law forcing logistics and eCommerce companies to ensure that their subcontractors pay proper social security contributions for their drivers, and the introduction of a higher basic pension for low-income workers.
At a SPD national convention in 2019, Hubertus Heil was elected as one of the five deputies of the party's co-chairs Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans, alongside Klara Geywitz, Kevin Kuhnert, Serpil Midyatli and Anke Rehlinger.
Ahead of the 2021 elections, Hubertus Heil was elected to lead the SPD campaign in Lower Saxony.
Hubertus Heil led efforts to fast-track work permits and visas for several thousand foreign airport workers, mainly from Turkey, to help to ease staffing shortages in the tourism sector after a series of COVID-19 lockdowns.
In October 2023, Hubertus Heil participated in the first joint cabinet retreat of the German and French governments in Hamburg, chaired by Scholz and President Emmanuel Macron.
In 2012, Hubertus Heil proposed a special panel in the Federal Chancellery to help overcome professional skill shortages, comprising representatives of industry, unions as well as the federal labor agency and regional and community associations.
Hubertus Heil is married to lawyer Solveig Orlowski, who has managed the Berlin office of the Association of Telecommunications and Value-Added Service Providers since 2005.
Hubertus Heil's brother Georg Heil is a journalist with public broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk.