How Merkel Warmed to a German Minimum Wage

[xchrom]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,796591,00.html

Party leaders have three ways of dealing with an approaching wave. They can resist it, duck or take a wait-and-see approach. Or they can try surfing on it.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has chosen the third option. For weeks, the leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party has seen a demand approaching her that she can neither stop nor allow to pass while remaining unscathed -- the demand that she support a push for a comprehensive minimum wage law for Germany.

The issue has broad popular support. In a poll conducted late last week, 86 percent of respondents said they were in favor of the introduction of a legal minimum wage, and even 78 percent of union members supported the idea.

Depite being regarded as one of the West's more progressive and egalitarian societies, Germany has no legal minimum wage, a fact that might come as a surprise to many. For decades, opposing a legal minimum wage was one of the core principles of Merkel's CDU. Against the resistance of the party establishment, Karl-Josef Laumann -- the head of the Christian Democratic Employees' Association (CDA), a wing of the party representing workers' interests -- has shifted the mood in the party in recent months by raising awareness of the issue within the party base. Meanwhile, the CDA wing's seven state associations, led by the chapter in North Rhine-Westphalia, the largest, are now in favor setting a legally mandated minimum wage.

[mwrguy]

1. I'm astounded that they don't already have one.