According to Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD), the employers' associations are responsible for ensuring that the new government coalition made up of the SPD, Greens and FDP must raise the statutory minimum wage in an unscheduled step from 9.82 euros today to 12 euros per hour.

"If the employers' associations do not want the state to intervene, then they can and must do their homework when it comes to collective bargaining," he said in an interview with the German press agency.

“Only 48 percent of employees are bound by collective bargaining agreements.” Heil also affirmed its intention to present a bill to increase the minimum wage “in the next few weeks”.

"And we will increase it in 2022 because it is necessary."

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

  • Follow I follow

Heil's criticism of the lack of “homework” is apparently a reaction to strong opposition from employers' associations to the project. Employer President Rainer Dulger recently announced that he would examine a constitutional lawsuit against the planned minimum wage law, as the project violated the principles of collective bargaining and social partnership. He had also announced that he would be examining a withdrawal of the employer representatives from the minimum wage commission.

Dulger is primarily against the political intention to enforce the 12 euros bypassing the existing minimum wage commission.

According to the rules of the Minimum Wage Act, which has been in force since 2015, it is the sovereignty of the commission, which is made up of equal numbers of employer and trade union representatives, to submit a proposal to the government to increase the minimum wage every two years.

According to this law, the government cannot deviate from it;

she only has the choice of whether or not to implement a proposal.

Criticism of low collective bargaining coverage

The planned increase to 12 euros would be a rule change. If it came into force this year, as announced by Heil, it would also interfere with the Commission's decision of June 2020, which is still in force; this refers to the period up to the end of this year with a total of four-stage increase. On January 1, the third stage came into force with an increase from 9.60 to 9.82 euros. For the period from July to December 2022, the resolution provides for 10.45 euros. The old federal government had formally confirmed this at the request of Labor Minister Heil in September 2020.

The fact that Heil blames the employers' associations for what it sees as insufficient collective bargaining coverage is remarkable in that the core business of these associations is the conclusion of collective agreements for their member companies.

Specifically, this should be understood as a criticism of insufficient membership of the employers' associations.

In the conversation he apparently did not comment on possible contributions from trade unions to the formation of collective agreements and their membership development.