A long road to a legal minimum wage must end soon. That is the slogan of the initiative for a legal minimum wage. The country is one of the few in the EU without a minimum wage (see also the March Newsletter). Political parties agree it’s time to end that anomaly. Welfare reforms have increased the pressure on workers to take up low-paid jobs and led to a rise in the number of working poor, which in turn has fuelled a national debate on social justice. Around 5 million workers – some 16% of all employees – currently earn less than the envisaged national minimum wage of €8.50 per hour.
English: http://olafstorbeck.blogstrasse2.de/?p=1828
German: http://www.initiative-mindestlohn.de/handelblatt.pdf
www.sueddeutsche.de/thema/Mindestlohn
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.