Germany to extend minimum wage to six sectors

More than a million workers to receive minimum wage after parliament voted to extend legally binding basic pay.

More than a million German workers are set to receive a minimum wage after parliament voted to extend legally binding basic pay to six sectors, including security guards, carers and waste management workers.

Subject to the agreement of parliament’s upper chamber these employees will join around 1.8m postal, construction and cleaning workers who are already guaranteed a minimum wage.

A separate cabinet agreement will soon set a wage floor for 600,000 temp agency employees, leaving around 3.5m of Germany’s 40m workers covered by minimum wage rules.

Germany remains one of the few European Union member states without a nationwide minimum wage and the matter is set to take a prominent role in this summer’s general election campaign.

Postal workers in 2007 became some of the first German employees to be governed by minimum wage legislation. That decision ended up in the courts after rivals to Deutsche Post, the main postal company, complained the agreed wage level was protectionist.

The legislation will ensure that those workers who do not currently receive wages in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement governing their particular sector will now do so.

Where less than 50% of workers in a particular sector have no collective wage agreement, members of parliament voted to create a committee to consider if a minimum wage should be introduced, after consultation with employers.