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Frank Bsirske, President of Germany's giant trade union ver.di, and also President of UNI-Europa, has launched a campaign to rid Europe's largest economy of hunger wages and social misery. A law on minimum wages is necessary, which gives all workers the right to take home at least 7.50 Euro's per hour, the German trade union movement says as the country's election campaign is about o start. At the same time ver.di is focusing strongly on securing similar guarantees through its own sectoral collective bargaining.

It is a scandal, a human and a political scandal, a scandal for our society, the system of paying hunger wages! Throughout this country, people are toiling at work, often more than 40 hours per week. Still they cannot feed their families with what they earn in wages.

Frank Bsirske, president of Germany's largest trade union ver.di does not spare his words.

- This is a form of modern slave trade, a violation of the value of human beings. This is not morally and humanly acceptable.

- It is also a political scandal, a scandal for our society, as the system of hunger wages hinders hundreds of thousands of people from participating in societal and cultural life, Frank Bsirske says, and adds that one cannot even talk about any access to education and training.

Union demands a minimum wage

Nobody should be paid less than 7.50 Euros per hour. This is the demand that the huge UNI-affiliated trade union is bringing to the political arena as Germany is moving towards the next election campaign. Together with the trade union confederation DGB, ver.di is calling on the decision makers to legally enforce this minimum wage.

Ver.di is also fighting for special minimum wages to be set in sectors where wage dumping is a particularly big problem, such as in the private security industry and in call centres. This follows a successful campaign to secure the income levels for Germany's postal workers.

Tense situation in commerce

In commerce, the collective agreement situation remains tense. The employers have not budged from their intentions to remove bonus pay for work at late hours, which follows a recent de-regulation of the shop opening hours.

For the workers and their unions its clear that this will bring late opening in as yet another element of the cut-throat competition between the leading giants of German retailing. Here, the needs of the workers and their families don't weigh much at all.

The turnover in retailing has not grown since opening hours were extended last year, ver.di says. The union is convinced that the efforts to scrap bonus pay are aimed at squeezing smaller competitors out of the market and cutting their own wage costs.

Hundreds of thousands shop workers have participated in strikes

Never before has German retailing seen a strike wave like the one that is now moving over the country. Hundreds of thousands have participated in the strikes which have touched leading retailers such as Reichelt, Real, Kaufland, Karstadt, Kaufhof and Ikea.

Also UNI Commerce has made it clear to the German retail employers that their attack on bonus pay is unacceptable. There is no commercial workers' union which would accept to remove the bonuses from their collective agreements. The whole approach seems to aim at making workers pay the price for competition problems which they had no part in bringing about.