According to Labor Minister Heil, companies that work for the federal government should pay according to the collective agreement. However, the bill is currently not making any progress.
There are disagreements in the traffic light coalition over the law to strengthen collective bargaining, which is being pushed by the SPD. According to newspapers from the Funke Media Group, the FDP-led Federal Ministry of Finance is blocking the start of the association hearing. This was confirmed to the German Press Agency by government circles. One reason given is that Finance Minister Christian Lindner’s office wants to relieve companies of bureaucracy elsewhere first. A spokesman for Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) told the Funke newspapers: “Internal government discussions are ongoing.” The Ministry of Finance explained that it would not comment on internal government votes.
According to the draft law, employees who work on behalf of the federal government should generally work under the protection of a collective agreement in the future. After Heil presented the draft law, associations should now be consulted. In their coalition agreement in 2021, the SPD, Greens and FDP agreed to pass a collective bargaining law.
SPD faction irritated
The parliamentary manager of the SPD parliamentary group, Katja Mast, described it as “irritating that there seems to be resistance from the FDP-led Federal Ministry of Finance”. It is about fair competition conditions, namely for well-paid work, but above all for the companies “that pay their people properly and have little chance of winning public contracts due to unfair competition.” This is a question of economic common sense in order to strengthen Germany as a business location. Mast was convinced: “The collective bargaining agreement law is coming.”
The chairman of the service workers’ union Verdi, Frank Werneke, strongly criticized the delay and the behavior of the FDP. He told the Funke newspapers that preventing wage dumping through a sustainable improvement in collective bargaining coverage was a central project of the traffic light coalition for the benefit of employees. “If the FDP now questions the collective bargaining law again after a compromise announced long ago, the traffic light coalition is at risk of further serious damage to its political credibility,” warned Werneke.
Source: Stern
