Twelve euros are not enough (nd-aktuell.de)

For building cleaners, the industry minimum wage increases to 13 euros.

For building cleaners, the industry minimum wage increases to 13 euros.

For building cleaners, the industry minimum wage increases to 13 euros.

Photo: Visa/Werner Bachmeier

Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) celebrated on June 3rd. On that day, a majority of 398 out of 735 members of the Bundestag voted in favor of raising the statutory minimum wage to twelve euros on October 1st. It was one of the central SPD promises made in the federal elections last year, and it was the task of Heil’s department to implement it. »It’s not just about social balance; As a coalition, we are also concerned with social progress for Germany,« Heil celebrated himself and the traffic light coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP at the beginning of June.

In fact, the unions also fought for a long time to raise the fee to twelve euros. “We have to make the minimum wage poverty-proof, because that brings significant additional revenue for the tax authorities and social security funds and saves people the trip to the office,” demanded, for example, the then DGB boss Reiner Hoffmann in an interview at the beginning of 2020. But raising the minimum wage to twelve euros was not quite as easy to enforce.

Normally, the Minimum Wage Commission makes a proposal on how much to adjust the statutory lower wage limit, which the federal government then follows. However, the commission is made up of equal numbers of trade union and employer representatives. And the latter would never have agreed to such a high increase. An increase by law was therefore necessary. “We will increase the statutory minimum wage to twelve euros per hour in a one-off adjustment,” the SPD, Greens and FDP then stated in their coalition agreement after the SPD and Greens had promised an unscheduled increase in their election campaigns.

The minimum wage is currently €10.45 per hour. According to calculations by the Economic and Social Science Institute (WSI) of the Hans Böckler Foundation, which is close to the trade union, around 6.6 million employees who currently earn below the new minimum wage will benefit from the increase to twelve euros. This corresponds to 17.8 percent of all employees who are legally entitled to the minimum wage.

Above all, employees in eastern Germany will benefit from the increase. According to the WSI, the rate here is 29.1 percent. In areas such as Sonneberg in Thuringia or Teltow-Fläming in Brandenburg, 44 and 43.1 percent of all employees, respectively, benefit from the low wage levels there, while in western Germany including Berlin it is an average of 16.1 percent. In Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, for example, only 7.9 percent of employees currently earn less than twelve euros.

In addition, in the course of the recent increase in some low-wage sectors, there have been wage agreements that are well worth seeing. The industry minimum wage for around 700,000 building cleaners will rise to 13 euros on October 1st. That is an increase of 12.6 percent. The group-wide minimum wage was also raised to 13 euros for Lufthansa ground workers.

“The increase to twelve euros an hour is a success for the trade union movement and the many millions of people in the country who have been fighting for years to raise the minimum wage,” says Stefan Körzell, board member of the DGB. For many, this means a ray of hope in these difficult times.

Finally, the federal government quickly sold the minimum wage increase as an anti-crisis measure to stabilize the economy. “The increase in the minimum wage to twelve euros decided by the Federal Cabinet today will increase the net income for many millions of employees,” the coalition stated in its decision on the first relief package in the context of the energy price crisis in February. According to the Institute for Macroeconomics and Business Cycle Research (IMK), the increase and the most recent collective bargaining agreements “make an important contribution to preventing the real income of dependent employees from falling even further”.

In view of such effects, it is also difficult for the opposition to criticize the increase. Although the left parliamentary group voted against the traffic light’s corresponding legislative proposal, the deputy parliamentary group leader Susanne Ferschl spoke beforehand in her speech of a reasonable increase in the minimum wage to twelve euros. What she criticized, however, is that the federal government also expanded the mini-job rules in the course of the increase. This threatens “the further displacement of employment subject to social security contributions,” says Ferschl.

In addition, the minimum wage does not apply to all employees. For example, trainees have no entitlement under the Vocational Training Act, and it does not apply to interns either. There is also no minimum wage for the long-term unemployed in the first six months of their employment, prisoners or people in workshops for the disabled.

Above all, however, it is actually already outdated as a limit that should guarantee a poverty-proof wage. The left has therefore been calling for an increase to 13 euros for some time. Especially since the currently extremely high rate of inflation is causing distress for people well into the middle class.

That is why DGB board member Körzell not only has words of praise regarding the minimum wage increase. »The minimum wage is not enough for real participation. This is currently getting worse in view of the rising prices for energy and food, the minimum wage will not cushion this price surge,” he criticizes and calls for further measures: “The federal government must not allow poverty to eat its way into the middle class.”


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