On 14 November, at the annual congress of the governing Christian Democrat (CDU) party in Leipzig Chancellor Angela Merkel has got an overwhelming vote in favour of a binding minimum wage in sectors which do not have such a wage determined by collective bargaining. Nearly 1,000 delegates voted in favour of the proposal, and only four were against. However, the orientation on a level of €7 per hour, that the “social wing” of the CDU had planned earlier, was not made explicit. Coalition partner FDP remains vehemently opposed against a general minimum wage. In an interview CDU Minister for Labour and Social Affairs, Ursula von der Leyen, promised to take initiatives towards the implementation of the general minimum directly after the party congress, including talks with the FDP. Anyway, with the progressive parties in favour it is clear that the general minimum wage is backed by a large majority in the Bundestag, the federal parliament (See also this Collective Bargaining Newsletter Year 4 October 2011).
German: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,797776,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,797240,00.html
This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. or the communications officer of the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2011.