In Germany and other European countries, numerous employees have now returned from their summer vacation. How long vacation can last also depends on how much paid vacation the employer grants. In companies to which a collective agreement applies, employees are much better off when it comes to this question. This is the result of a study that the European trade union confederation Etuc published on Monday and that of the Süddeutsche Zeitung is present. In Germany and Croatia, the difference between the statutory minimum vacation and vacation days stipulated by collective agreements is therefore greatest in the EU – on average, vacation entitlement increases from four to six weeks.
This enormous bonus for those employees who benefit from collective agreements is explosive. Ultimately, collective bargaining coverage is falling in most European countries, i.e. the proportion of employees for whose companies such contracts apply. A controversial EU directive on minimum wages and collective bargaining coverage is intended to reverse the trend. That would be entirely in the spirit of the Etuc trade union federation: “Too many employees had to take their summer vacation shorter because they still do not benefit from the advantages of collective bargaining,” says Etuc Deputy General Secretary Esther Lynch. The study commissioned by the Brussels organization calculates that the European average of collective agreements guarantees three days of additional vacation.
In Germany, 51 percent of employees work in companies with industry or in-house collective agreements, such as one investigation of the Institute for Employment Research shows. According to the Etuc the collective bargaining agreement fell since the turn of the millennium in 22 of 27 EU states, including the Federal Republic. The most dramatic losses were seen in Romania and Greece, where all employees were previously protected by such contracts, but now only one in four has now been reformed.
Last autumn the EU Commission presented one Draft Directive, which aims to increase minimum wages and collective bargaining coverage. The proposed law does not prescribe specific wages, but it does prescribe standards that states should adhere to when setting their minimum wages. He is also forcing governments to draw up action plans to increase collective bargaining coverage if that is below 70 percent.
A CDU politician wants to strengthen unions
For the draft to become law, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, the decision-making body of the member states, must agree. In the EU Parliament, two so-called rapporteurs are responsible for the directive, including the CDU member Dennis Radtke. The former trade union secretary wants to sharpen the already controversial proposal of the commission: He wants to enforce that states must strive for not just 70, but even 90 percent collective bargaining coverage. So far only Austria, France, Belgium, Finland and Sweden have achieved this. This social ambition angered many of Radtke’s party friends in the CDU / CSU; they accuse him of violating fundamental principles of the Union. Radtke calls such criticism “hair-raising”.