Photo Gallery Making Ends Meet
Low-paid workers like this bakery employee are not feeling the economic upswing in Germany, where unlike most of Europe, there is still no minimum wage. While some attribute this flexibility for employers with the country's success, studies show it is leading to greater social inequality. But Berlin could introduce a minimum wage soon.
Many workers in the service industry, such as cleaning staff and shop workers, work in the low-wage sector, defined by an hourly rate that is less than two-thirds of the median hourly working wage of 9.62. One in five Germans falls into this category, and some are forced to supplement their income with state welfare.
Jens Büttner / dpa
About one million workers qualify for state support called Hartz IV because their earnings are considered too small to survive on, says Wolfgang Uellenberg of public service trade union Ver.di. Here, a welfare office in Hamburg.
A mural in Berlin advocates a minimum wage in Germany, one of the few countries in Europe that has not implemented such a policy. But Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right coalition is reportedly working on implementing a minimum wage.
Protestors in Stuttgart demand a minimum wage at a protest in May 2012. The argument that a national minimum wage would lead to an increase in unemployment is "nonsense," Ver.di's Uellenberg says. "Competition would simply shift. There would be more emphasis on good service rather than on cheap labor."
Currently, trade unions often negotiate minimum wage agreements within specific industries, such as for these shipyard workers. But these agreements often leave out temporary workers, who end up doing the same job as employees with permanent contracts, but for less pay.
Even cleaning staff at the parliament building in Berlin, shown here, receive low wages. Politicians seem to have taken notice of the problem, though. Social-equality policies taken up in anticipation of the 2013 election by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, include both a universal minimum wage project and improvements for temporary workers.
