There are many small and medium-sized companies that “pay decently” and are bound by collective agreements, also against the background of the shortage of skilled workers, emphasized the Labor Minister. But they would be “undercut by cheap people” in public contracts.
“We can’t stand by and see how we use tax money to encourage wage evasion to a large extent,” he criticized. The draft law is almost complete and is currently being coordinated with the Federal Ministry of Economics. “We will present this before the summer,” announced Heil.
SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich demanded that the project “must be launched as soon as possible”. Despite growing competition from other countries, more and more companies have understood “that they have to offer people in Germany security in order to win them over,” said Mützenich of the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post” (Monday edition).
Against the background of the many challenges, the plans of the traffic light coalition to strengthen collective bargaining are “enormously important,” said Mützenich, referring to the shortage of skilled workers, digitization, demographic change and the transition to a climate-neutral economy.
Greens leader Ricarda Lang called for a federal law to adhere to collective agreements “by the summer break” by the Bundestag. “In the future, no more state money may be spent on wage dumping,” Lang told the “Tagesspiegel” on Sunday.
“Wherever the state acts as a client, you have to pay according to tariffs,” Lang demanded. The Greens leader pointed out that collective bargaining coverage in Germany has fallen by 20 percentage points over the past two and a half decades.
According to the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB), only about every second employee now benefits from a collective agreement. According to EU regulations, states in which collective bargaining coverage is less than 80 percent must take action.
The SPD, Greens and FDP had already agreed in their coalition agreement to strengthen collective bargaining. There it says that “public procurement by the federal government should be tied to compliance with a representative collective agreement for the respective industry”.
The collective bargaining agreement is “a strong lever to renew the promise of advancement and to guarantee good work,” Lang campaigned for the project. “Those who work according to a collective agreement earn better on average.”
At the end of last year, the Federal Government held a public consultation on the question of a Federal Collective Bargaining Act. The results should flow into a joint draft law by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Federal Ministry of Labor.
