The corona pandemic has driven up the inflation rate. This is not compensated for by the collective agreements that have already been concluded. Experts are still hoping for some room for improvement in the negotiations.
For the first time in a decade, the rise in collectively agreed wages in 2021 is unlikely to be enough to offset the general rise in prices.
The main reason for this is the effects of the corona crisis, as the economic and social science institute of the union-related Hans Böckler Foundation reported on Thursday in an interim review of the collective bargaining round.
According to the collective agreements concluded in the first half of the year and in previous years for 2021, wages will rise by 1.6 percent this year, according to the WSI. In view of the recently significantly increased inflation rate, the real collective wage development will be slightly negative with a minus of 0.2 percent. This has only happened three times in the last 20 years: 2006, 2007 and 2011.
In 2018 and 2019, collectively agreed wages rose relatively sharply with increases of 3.0 and 2.9 percent. But since the spring of 2020, the wage disputes have been “entirely dominated by the corona crisis,” said the head of the WSI tariff archive, Thorsten Schulten. In 2020, collectively agreed wages only rose by 2.0 percent and the downward trend continued in 2021, so that this year only an increase of 1.6 percent is in sight.
The downward trend was tempered by the collective bargaining agreements concluded for 2021 in recent years. In the case of the new collective agreements concluded in the first half of 2021, the wage increases averaged only 1.1 percent.
However, collective bargaining expert Schulten hopes that there is still room for improvement in terms of the deals in the ongoing or upcoming collective bargaining negotiations, for example in the retail sector or in the public sector of the federal states. After all, these are industries in which the corona pandemic demanded very special performance from employees. “It is therefore quite possible that at the end of the year the interim results presented today for 2021 can be revised upwards a little,” he said.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
