Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Campaigning For A European Minimum Wage: Lessons From Germany & Switzerland

Stan De Spiegelaere and Ferdi De Ville 18th March 2014

Stan De Spiegelaere, minimum wage

Stan De Spiegelaere

With the upcoming European elections, political parties on the left are paying lip service to the call for a European minimum wage policy. Such a policy would serve as a first step in the development of a more social Europe, enhance the legitimacy of the Union and could contribute to a wage-driven growth model for Europe. A European minimum wage policy would mean a radical shift in the policy orientation of the Union and by consequence the campaign for such a policy will be long and exhausting. Luckily, the European left can learn from two very recent and largely successful minimum wage campaigns in Europe: Germany and Switzerland.

Switzerland and Germany: Mindestlöhne Jetzt! Kein lohn unter 8,50 Euro pro Stunde!

Ferdi De Ville, minimum wage

Ferdi De Ville

In both countries there is (up until now) no universal minimum wage. Strong union power and a tight labour market resulted in relatively high wages so that there was no pressing need for such a legally binding minimum wage. Collective bargaining did the trick. This nevertheless changed in recent years. Growth slowed down, unemployment figures rose and union power declined. Definitely in the female dominated service industries wages plummeted.

In Switzerland it was the small and relatively young service sector union UNIA that started campaigning for a minimum wage. In a first step they focused on increasing minimum wages through collective bargaining. As their demand went against the neo-liberal economic consensus, they invested heavily in developing both an economic and ethical argument. Academic research showed first that a minimum wage would not lead to a social bloodbath or cause an economic downturn.

On the ethical side, naming-and-shaming campaigns focused on particular companies paying indecent wages to their employees. All in all, research of Oesch & Rieger showed that this campaign was relatively successful and led to an overall increase of wages in Switzerland through collective bargaining. Some years later, the unions decided to change their strategy and joined an alliance of political parties and NGO’s for a universal minimum wage.

In Germany, just as in Switzerland, the initiative for the minimum wage campaign came from a small union. The NGG (Gewerkschaft Nahrung-Genuss-Gaststätten) opened the debate without waiting for a consensus in the DGB. After some hesitation, the larger service union Ver.di joined in and it was only after 6 years that the DGB congress decided to support this struggle for a universal minimum wage in Germany.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

Also here, the unions invested in the development of an economic argument on the necessity and feasibility of a national minimum wage. Public campaigning and political lobbying resulted in the adoption of the demand by the SPD and the inclusion of (some kind of) a minimum wage in the recent policy program of the CDU-SPD coalition.

Lessons learned

In the wake of the European elections, the political parties on the left can learn some essential lessons from these recent national campaigns. First of all, the importance of making a strong economic argument is evident. In the current ideological context, it is of central importance to make a strong case that a European minimum wage policy will not lead to a social bloodbath and will not affect economic growth and employment levels.

Second, we note that in both countries labour unions took a central role in the campaigning. Minimum wages affect the core of the labour union interests and their mobilizing power should be used effectively to push forward this demand. Related to this, we observe that in both countries the initiative was taken by smaller partners. They did not wait for a consensus in the labour movement but constructed this consensus during public campaigning.

Given the missing consensus on this issue in the European Trade Union Confederation, this last lesson is of central importance to the partisans of a European minimum wage policy: the slowest should not set the pace.

Stan De Spiegelaere and Ferdi De Ville

Stan De Spiegelaere is a researcher at HIVA (Research Institute for Work and Society – KU Leuven) and a member of Poliargus, a Belgian leftish think tank. Ferdi De Ville is Professor at the Centre for EU studies (UGent) and a member of Poliargus.

You are here: Home / Politics / Campaigning For A European Minimum Wage: Lessons From Germany & Switzerland

Most Popular Posts

Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic

Most Recent Posts

Pakistan,flooding,floods Flooded Pakistan, symbol of climate injusticeZareen Zahid Qureshi
reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube