On January 13, nearly one month after the negotiations failed, the food and catering employers’ organization (ANG) and the food and catering union (NGG) announced –surprising everyone – that they had defined the outline of a collective agreement introducing, for the first time, minimum wage in the meat industry. Presented at a joint press conference today, January 14, the agreement provides for the introduction of a single rate of minimum wage across the country. It will gradually go from €7.75/hour on July 1, 2014 up to €8.75 on December 1, 2016. The agreement covers the sector’s 80,000 employees as well as eastern European workers with a ‘service provision contract.’ This should be “the beginning of the end of wage dumping in the meat industry,” declared NGG deputy chair Claus-Harald Güster.
Restore the sector’s image. At a press conference, Valerie Holsboer, head of the ANG employers’ organization, explained this unexpected U-turn by the fact that both parties, notably the sector’s businesses, were highly determined. “We wanted a solution negotiated by the social partners, not imposed by the lawmaker.
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