Labour market: billions of damage from violations of the minimum wage

Because companies are undergoing the minimum wage, workers and social security funds are spending almost ten billion euros a year. The damage is also enormous for the general public.

Labour market: billions of damage from violations of the minimum wage

1,532 Euro gross per month – so much a person in Germany who works full-time (40 hours a week) and receives statutory minimum wage is earned. That's not a lot of money. It is very difficult to feed a family or even save money for old age.

Neverless, this minimum limit is often undergoing. According to Union-related Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, re were about 2.2 million employees in 2016, who had actually been granted minimum wage of at that time 8.50 euros per hour but did not receive it. These are even more than 1.8 million affected by German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in December for year 2016. Legal exceptions to minimum wage are calculated.

Toralf Pusch, a labour market researcher at Economic and Social Science Institute (WSI) of Böckler Foundation, has calculated extent to which damage to society is caused by disregard of legal minimum wage introduced in 2015 in year in question. Was: All in all about 7.6 billion euros. In addition, re are about 2.3 billion euros of damage due to violations of sector's minimum wages, which are related to construction and old care.

"Finally to improve controls"

The amount is composed as follows: Employers have withheld person affected by breach of general statutory minimum wage by an average of 251 euros per month – according to Pusch, gross lohnausfall for 2016 totals 6.5 billion euros. As lower wages were reduced by social security contributions, social insurance companies also lost a volume of about 1.1 billion euros. According to Puschs calculations, a good 750,000 employees were affected by violations of industry minimum wages, which had been deprived of around two billion euros in wages; The social security funds were employer's contributions of about 300 million euros.

"The widespread Mindestlohnumgehungen not only harms workers concerned, but also general public," says Pusch. "Finally, improving controls is of highest public interest."

Women and East Germans are particularly often affected

There are three things that are striking in investigation. First, according to Pusch, female workers are more than twice as often victims of Mindestlohnverstößen as men: 11.5 percent of women and 4.6 percent of men were deprived of minimum wage in 2016. "This corresponds with result that circumventions in service sectors with many small businesses and mini are particularly frequent, in which many female employees work," explains WSI.

Second, minimum wage in East Germany is circumvented much more frequently (12.6 percent) than in West (7.3 percent). and thirdly, companies with collective agreements and works councils would have been much more consistent with law than companies that lack both. According to Böckler Foundation, this should also be a reason for West-east difference: In new countries, fewer companies are tariff-bound, and re are also rare works councils that can respect minimum wage.

The results of study are based on a extrapolation from socio-economic panel. Every year in Germany about 30,000 people in nearly 11,000 households are asked about what y are working on and earning.

Date Of Update: 24 March 2018, 12:03
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