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Geriatric nurse, resident in nursing home: risk of dumping collective agreements
Photo: Christophe Gateau / dpa
For a long time it looked as if the grand coalition would fail with a care reform - then the federal government agreed on a slimmed-down variant last week. This is intended to deliver at least a little on a core promise that has been repeated for years to the elderly care workers: the end of widespread wage dumping. From September 2022, only those care facilities should be approved that pay a collective wage. The law on this is to be passed by the Bundestag in the coming week.
Now, according to SPIEGEL information, the Ver.di union has sent a fire letter to all members of the Bundestag, with the exception of the AfD, in which they demand "urgent amendments" in the law in the few remaining days - otherwise, they fear, many elderly care workers could end up go away empty-handed.
"The regulations contained therein have decisive structural errors and are extremely prone to abuse, so there is a great risk that they will have no effect for a large part of the nursing staff," says Ver.di boss Frank Werneke and the responsible board member, Sylvia Bühler, which is available to SPIEGEL.
Loophole for employers
Specifically, Ver.di sees a loophole for employers in the definition of the permissible relevant collective agreements.
Private sector organizations in particular have only rarely been bound by collective bargaining so far.
The draft law passed by the cabinet stipulates that in future they will have to comply with any collective agreement that is valid in their region - or in other words: they can choose which wages apply to them in their region.
In most cases, region refers to the state in question.
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"All providers in your state then have the option of selecting a single, very low collective agreement," even if this collective agreement "only applied to a handful of employees and was therefore irrelevant," Ver.di warns the MPs. The consequence would be a cementing of the previous low wage level. In addition, there is a risk of "conciliatory collective agreements" that employers could conclude with their subordinate micro-unions. The draft law does not provide for a mechanism to prevent this, write the trade unionists, but "even provides incentives for such fatal coalitions". As a result, other employers could also follow these dumping collective agreements, which could pull regional wages even lower.
The union therefore demands that employers not bound by collective bargaining should in future not have to adhere to any arbitrary collective agreement, but to the average remuneration of all collective agreements in the region. This wording in the law ensures that the reform actually leads to higher wages for elderly care workers, the Ver.di officials write to members of the Bundestag.