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On June 26, 2023, the Minimum Wage Commission decided to increase the statutory minimum wage for the years 2024 and 2025. The minimum wage should therefore be increased to €12.41 gross on January 1, 2024 and to €12.82 gross per hour on January 1, 2025.
The Minimum Wage Commission usually submits a proposal to increase the minimum wage every two years. The increase in the minimum wage to €12/hour in 2022 was an unscheduled adjustment that was set out in the coalition agreement. As a result, there was no further increase in 2023.
The increase in wages according to current planning corresponds to an increase in the minimum wage of 3.3%.
How can this situation be justified given current inflation rates?
The employer side of the Commission argued that there should initially be no short-term, extraordinary increase after the unscheduled political intervention in 2022. She was also of the opinion that the current level of the minimum wage should remain unchanged in 2024.
The trade union side of the commission could not agree to this, so the chair of the commission drafted a mediation proposal. She accepted the possibility of consent from both sides. The union side would therefore have received an increase despite objections from the employer side, which would not be extraordinarily high and, thanks to the early announcement, would still give the collective bargaining parties sufficient time to take the development of the minimum wage into account when developing their collective agreements.
The employer side accepted this proposal, with which the gradual increase until 2025 was decided. The union side still did not agree with the proposal and subsequently expressed their disappointment with the decision.
“There was no way we could lend our hand for an adjustment of just a few cents. With this decision, the almost six million minimum wage employees are suffering an enormous loss of real wages. The Minimum Wage Commission is therefore not fulfilling its task of ensuring the legally required minimum protection for employees. In order to achieve this minimum protection and to compensate for inflation, the minimum wage would have had to rise to at least 13.50 euros. The employers and the chairwoman of the commission have refused this,” announced Stefan Körzell, DGB board member and member of the minimum wage commission.