Labor market: Study: Without a collective agreement, more work for less money

According to a study by the trade union Hans Böckler Foundation, employees with collective agreements have an advantage. According to this, full-time employees in companies without collective bargaining agreements have to work an average of 53 minutes longer per week and still receive ten percent less salary than collective bargaining employees, as the Economic and Social Sciences Institute (WSI) of the foundation in Düsseldorf announced. Over the course of a year, this corresponds to an additional working week, while more than a month’s salary is missing from the account.

However, collective bargaining continues to dwindle in Germany. Last year, only 49 percent of employees worked in collectively agreed companies, compared to 68 percent in 2000. The basis of the study is the company panel of the Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research (IAB) at the employment agency, for which around 15,000 companies are surveyed in detail every year. Not even one in four (24 percent) of companies is still bound by a collective agreement. Companies that are based on industry collective agreements without obligation are not taken into account here.

In East Germany, companies without collective bargaining agreements save particularly significantly on the salaries of their employees. According to the study, in Brandenburg, for example, non-tariff wages are around 15 percent lower than those in collectively agreed companies. Significant differences in working hours, however, are more common in the West. The scientists observed the largest difference in Baden-Württemberg, where full-time employees without collective agreements had to work 83 minutes longer than their colleagues who were bound by collective agreements. The WSI demanded suitable measures from the federal government in order to achieve the collective bargaining rate of 80 percent required by the EU.