Germany -Higher negotiated wage increases in 2011 -January 20, 2012

Nominally, the collectively negotiated wage increases were higher in 2011 than in the years before. Overall, including longer-term collective agreements, the average wage increase was 2.0%, according to the Collective Agreements Archive (Tarifarchiv) of the Social and Economic Research Institute (WSI). Dr Reinhard Bispinck, leader of the Archive, adds that the unexpectedly strong increase of consumer prices has led to a negative real bargained wage for many workers: on average 0.3%, as inflation was 2.3%. Yet, due to additional payments, longer working hours and the reduction of short-time arrangements (“Kurzarbeit”), real wage incomes rose by 1.1%, and on an hourly base by 0.5%. In 2011, unions affiliated with the DGB negotiated collective agreements for about 9.2 million employees, with an average duration of 22.8 months.

German: http://www.boeckler.de/14_38704.htm;
http://www.boeckler.de/pdf/pm_ta_2012_01_20.pdf

 

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 2012.