Germany: the large coalition adopted a compromise on the creation of branch minimum wages

After a new summit meeting in the night between June 18 and June 19 in Berlin, the two large parties in power - the social-democrats (SPD) and the Christian Unions (CDU/CSU) - could not agree on the introduction of a legal minimum wage for all, lauded by the SPD. However, they agreed on the establishment of a system enabling to extend to the entire branch the minimum wage negotiated by social partners. The property services, temporary work, postal services and waste processing sectors already said that they are interested. For the moment, only the building and industrial cleaning sectors have a branch minimum wage (see our story 070205). (Ref. 070546)
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Created in 1996, this law (“Entsendegesetz”) enables to make mandatory in all of a sector’s companies, whether they signed the collective conventions or not, a minimum wage set by social partners. It essentially aims at fighting against wage dumping from eastern European countries.

Field of application. To extend this law to new branches, the large coalition established a complex procedure and set a certain number of conditions. The law will only apply to branches for which over 50% of companies

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