Only every second employee in Germany benefits from a collective agreement. This is shown by a new survey by the Federal Statistical Office.
Less than half of the employees in Germany were employed in a collective bargaining company last year. The Federal Statistical Office reported the collective agreement rate of 49 percent.
According to the authority, comparisons with previous years are not possible because the number was collected for the first time for 2022 on the basis of new data.
58,000 companies of all sizes were questioned in detail as to whether a branch or company collective agreement applied to them. This means that companies that only apply collective agreements voluntarily are not considered to be bound by collective agreements. Your employees can still receive salaries and working conditions that are similar to those stipulated by collective bargaining agreements.
At 100 percent, the statisticians found the highest collective bargaining coverage rates in the public sector, in defense and in social insurance. There were low rates in hospitality (20 percent), arts, entertainment and recreation (21 percent), and agriculture and forestry at 11 percent.
In a European comparison, Germany lagged far behind in 2018 with a collective bargaining coverage of 48 percent. That was just enough for 18th place in the EU and fell well short of the European Parliament’s target of 80 percent collective bargaining coverage. More recent figures from the European statistical authority were not available.
Source: Stern
