The Greens want a lower limit on the minimum wage. The FDP doesn’t think anything of this – and speaks of an attack on collective bargaining autonomy.
The Green Party’s idea of a significant increase in the statutory minimum wage is met with strong resistance from the FDP. Secretary General Bijan Djir-Sarai told t-online: “I reject the Greens’ demand to arbitrarily increase the minimum wage. Their plans to reform the procedure for adjusting the minimum wage in the responsible minimum wage commission de facto amount to a politically fixed minimum wage. “
The deputy parliamentary group leader of the Liberals, Christoph Meyer, also speaks out against the idea. “Higher wages follow a growing economy. Instead of attacking collective bargaining autonomy like the Greens, we have to tackle the escalating bureaucracy and the high tax burden,” Meyer told t-online. “The minimum wage is not a product of state determination, but rather of autonomous negotiations between collective bargaining partners – that must be respected. In general, we only fight poverty with economic growth, not with planned economy guidelines.”
The parliamentary state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance, Katja Hessel (FDP), was also irritated by the move. When asked by the AFP news agency, she said: “A political determination of the minimum wage is wrong and contradicts the independent minimum wage commission.” She warns against a “purely ideological determination” of the minimum wage; such an approach endangers “jobs and the business location”.
Greens want a minimum wage
In a resolution paper for their upcoming parliamentary group meeting in Leipzig, which is available exclusively to t-online, the Greens are calling for a kind of minimum wage. The idea: The Minimum Wage Commission should continue to set the level of the legal minimum wage, but should not fall below a certain threshold.
According to the Greens, this should be 60 percent of the median income. For 2024 this would mean: the minimum wage would have to be well above 14 euros, in 2025 it should be just under 15 euros. Since January 1st, the legal minimum wage has been 12.41 euros.
The Green Party’s justification is as follows: “Despite the increase, the minimum wage is unfortunately still too low to provide long-term protection against poverty in view of high inflation.” The group therefore proposes changing the procedure for determining the minimum wage so that “the wages of low-income earners are not decoupled from general wage developments”.
The Greens are now receiving approval from their other coalition partner, the SPD. Parliamentary vice-president Dagmar Schmidt said she was pleased that “our coalition partner is now following our position and also wants to advocate for a larger increase in the minimum wage.”
