The plan to introduce minimum wage in retail trade has failed, for now. For over three years, the sector's social partners have been negotiating an agreement introducing minimum wage. However, a recent survey by the IAB Institute for Employment Research of the Federal Employment Agency shows that this agreement doesn't meet the statutory requirement needed to be extended to the entire sector because less than 50 percent of the sector's employees work in companies covered by collective agreements. The German Retail Federation (HDE), which is opposed to any form of statutory minimum wage defined by political parties, called on the government to make this provision more flexible. (Ref. 120364)
The social partners are not representative enough. Low-paid employees in retail trade (i.e. about 800,000 people out of a total of 2.7 million) are highly disappointed. The HDE employers’ organization, which has been discussing with the Verdi services union since 2008 (see our dispatch No. 100907) about the introduction of sectoral minimum wage, has taken a severe jab. “The project cannot go through at the moment” deplored Stefan Genth, HDE general secretary. Indeed, according to the Insti
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