Germany - Union hotline to check compliance with care sector minimum wage - August 17, 2010

Services union ver.di has welcomed the fact that the promised minimum wage regulation for the 750,000 workers in the care sector came into force on 1 August. Workers are now entitled to a minimum hourly rate of Euro 8.50 in the West and Euro 7.50 in the East. The rates will be increased to Euro 8.75 and Euro 7.75 from 1 January 2012 and to Euro 9.00 and Euro 8.00 from 1 July 2013. Ver.di had called for a higher rate and remains disappointed that there are different rates for East and West Germany. The union set up a telephone hotline for employees to report problems of compliance. Evidence from calls indicates that employers were not complying with the new regulations as they included holiday pay, Christmas pay, shift allowances and bonuses in their calculation of pay when it should just be basic pay. Said ver.di board member Ellen Paschke, “Employers seem to try everything as to evade the minimum wage regulation” (See also this Collective Bargaining Newsletter Year 3 March and May 2010).

English: http://www.epsu.org/cob/375; http://www.epsu.org/cob/374

German: http://presse.verdi.de/pressemitteilungen/showNews …

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI atwww.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009.