Germany: reelected at the head of the DGB, Michael Sommer calls for a “new social order”

For statutory hourly minimum wage amounting to €8.5. In 2006, during the last congress of the DGB, at the time divided between those in favor of a pragmatic attitude and those in favor of a conflicting approach, Michael Sommer only got 78.4% of the votes. Armed with his new score, the union leader pointed out that, over the next 4 years, he would focus on the fight against precarious jobs, which he thinks include low-paid jobs and temporary work. Denouncing “years of labor market anarchy,” Mr. Sommer called for the advent of a “new social order” characterized, notably, by similar working and pay conditions between permanent and temporary employees, between men and women, by the end of the wearing of the collective agreement system and by the containment of the low-paid sector. Reminding that the fee list, determined by the federal government in a decree, granted liberal trades (doctors, vets, dentists, lawyers, notaries, architects, and tax advisors) true “minimum wages,” the DGB’s leader called for the establishment of “statutory minimum pay of €8.5 for all!” (as opposed to €7.5 before). “I will never let the poorest of the poor compete between each other with pittance pay” railed the leader, who, raised by a single mother, a war widow, had a very poor childhood himself.