It was the SPD’s best election campaign hit. “Choose a minimum wage of 12 euros now. Scholz will tackle it,” said posters up and down the country. After the formation of the traffic light coalition under the leadership of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the minimum wage resolution, the chairmen Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil stuck a yellow banderole on a poster like this: “Promised. Kept.”
Other announcements such as 400,000 new apartments per year or Scholz, the climate chancellor, have not worked quite as well so far. The SPD had also promised not to set the minimum wage politically a second time. And not to advertise a new minimum wage in every election campaign. But the promises now face a stress test, before the European elections and with poor SPD poll numbers.
Lindner makes a smug comment
Since Olaf Scholz star said that he was clearly in favor of “increasing the minimum wage first to 14 euros, then in the next step to 15 euros”, the SPD is struggling to capture the debate. Secretary General Kevin Kühnert emphasized in Daily Mirror, the predestined place for determining the amount remains the independent minimum wage commission made up of employer and employee representatives. The taz used the template for a nice headline, for a picture of him and Scholz it said: “Kühnert puts the brakes on the cheeky SPD left-winger”.
FDP leader Christian Lindner smugly noted that the SPD is constantly making proposals that are not in the coalition agreement, and what is new is that the Chancellor is now also taking part in this as an election campaigner. Employer President Rainer Dulger believes that if politicians and unions continue to negotiate the minimum wage in the press, then the commission could be dissolved straight away. The SPD criticizes the fact that no consensual decision has been made recently and that the minimum wage has to rise more sharply due to inflation. The minimum wage rose by 41 cents to 12.41 euros at the beginning of 2024. In 2025 this is expected to increase by a further 41 cents.
Dulger emphasizes: “If anyone is breaking a taboo, it is the Chancellor. He has promised that he will no longer interfere in the work of the Minimum Wage Commission.” SPD leader Lars Klingbeil is unimpressed by this. In the ARD program “Maischberger” he emphasized that when the Commission meets again next spring, he expects a proposal that, according to all calculation methods, could only be 14 euros. “If the employers there are playing political games again, then we have to discuss it politically.” This can definitely be seen as a disguised threat.
Even the unions are against the move
Labor Minister Hubertus Heil tried to use irony in the Bundestag to capture some of the cacophony. When asked whether his party would use posters during the election campaign to demand a minimum wage of 13, 14, 15 or even 16 euros, Heil said that he was of course not ruling anything out. But he is not responsible for the posters. “I’m just gluing them.” The minister leaves no doubt that Heil also wants a higher minimum wage. “We don’t want to start talking about a 14 or 15 euro minimum wage during the federal election campaign,” he says. Instead, like SPD leader Klingbeil, he politely announces a work order to the minimum wage commission: “It is time to ensure that there is a significant increase in the minimum wage in the coming year.”
Not even in the trade union camp is there much joy about the Chancellor’s initiative. Of course, no one there would have any objection to a significant increase in the minimum wage. But it’s definitely against the way the discussions are going on now: “We don’t want the political debate,” says someone who is close to it. The minimum wage should not become an election campaign issue, as is now feared – this will make the discussions by the Commission, which has to decide on the next increase by the end of June 2025, even more difficult.
“Politicizing the minimum wage cannot please anyone”
The climate there is already harsh: At first, the employer representatives were angry because the traffic light law had simply increased the minimum wage from 10.45 euros to 12 euros; They retaliated by only allowing a mini increase to 12.41 euros at the next opportunity, in 2023. This angered the union side: Even given the high inflation of the past few years, the amount was far too low to protect low earners from poverty in old age.
Economists have also criticized Scholz’s move, and have done so unanimously. “Politicizing the minimum wage cannot please anyone,” said Martin Werding, who the employers proposed for the advisory committee. If politicians are now constantly commenting on this, it will be a matter of time before “populist-minded parties will also call up arbitrary numbers” and hijack the issue.
Achim Truger, who was appointed to the committee at the suggestion of the unions, proposes as a compromise that the minimum wage be linked to the value of 60 percent of the median income, “as a default setting, so to speak, which the Commission is negotiating.” A kind of automatism is also conceivable. But having a long-term commission that can be overruled when it is approved is “not a good model,” said Truger to the SPD.