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Minimum wage control by customs (archive picture): Do companies need a transition period?
Photo: Stefan Sauer / dpa
More than 20 percent and thus more than seven million of the employees on the German labor market are still only employed for the so-called low wage.
The majority of them could benefit from a minimum wage of twelve euros announced by the federal government, as announced by the Federal Statistical Office.
In total, there are 7.8 million jobs below the low-wage threshold, and the minimum wage increase would benefit almost 7.2 million - 92 percent of those employed in the low-wage sector.
The remaining 8 percent, including interns and minors, also include groups that belong to the low-wage sector, but for whom a minimum wage increase would not lead directly to an increase in earnings.
Minimum wage commission warns against hasty increases
In the statistics, the low-wage sector includes all employment relationships that are paid with less than two-thirds of median earnings.
In April 2021 that was 12.27 euros per hour.
Apprentices are not taken into account.
Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil announced at the weekend that the draft law to increase the minimum wage to twelve euros would be the first official act at the beginning of the new year.
Millions of people in Germany would benefit from the increase, mostly women, said the SPD politician of the "Rheinische Post".
The total number of low-wage jobs has fallen by around 250,000 since April 2018.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, however, this is probably due to the widespread short-time work in the corona crisis.
Your recipients are not counted.
The statisticians assume that recipients of low wages were more likely to be affected by short-time work than others.
The head of the minimum wage commission, Jan Zilius, has warned the traffic light parties against undertaking the planned increase too quickly.
A very short-term increase at the turn of the year would affect around 40 percent of the collective bargaining agreements, said Zilius "MDR-Aktuell" - and added that companies would need a transition period.
In the middle of next year, he said, 31 percent of collective agreements would be affected, and at the beginning of 2023 only 17 percent.
The collective bargaining parties would then "also have the option to react" to cushion the increase.
Zilius expressed fundamental understanding that the new government wants to raise the minimum wage faster.
However, he described the renewed intervention of politics in the autonomy of collective bargaining as a problem.
It is actually the task of the minimum wage commission to determine the respective level of the minimum wage.
The commission consists of three representatives sent by the employers, three trade unionists, the chairman and two academics who are not entitled to vote.
apr / AFP