Go back to raising wages, while at the same time allowing peripheral countries to recover competitiveness faster. This is the thought shared by those who, for several months, have been repeating that the German economic model, as it has been structured over the past decade, has contributed to the accumulation of strong trade imbalances in the Eurozone. For the time being it was a way of understanding reality adopted only by the German left, always skeptical of a development that has made wage moderation one of its cornerstones. Both in times of fat, as in times of lean, the German unions have in fact renounced to obtain generous wage increases, allowing Germany to stay afloat during the recession and subsequently to get back on track with good growth prospects.
A few days ago, however, also the Minister of Labor and Social Policies, the Christian Democrat Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), he suggested the need for the next round of negotiations between the social partners to reverse course and conclude with conspicuous wage increases, above the trend inflation rate. "The time has come for workers to be able to share in the fruits of economic growth," explained Von der Leyen, who then specified that she did not want to indicate any figures so as not to interfere in a matter which is the exclusive responsibility of trade unions and entrepreneurs ( Tariffautonomies).
Curiously, however, the Minister's warning coincided with the demands of the main trade union organization in the engineering and electronics sector, IG-Metall, which for the current year has asked for contractual increases of around 6,5%, making it official its request in the various Länder last Thursday. Ver.di, the union of public employees, is also on the same line. Collective bargaining in the metalworking sector is of strategic importance in Germany, as it has long served as a trailblazer for that in all other sectors, who are also engaged in a whirlwind of contract renewals today. In fact, for some time the CDU has been flirting with the social democratic motto, whereby every worker must be able to make a living from his own activity and has even gone so far as to overcome the taboo of the generalized minimum wage for all of Germany. Therefore, the departure of Von der Leyen, a minister who more than others has linked his political career to the name of Mrs. Merkel, is not surprising.
But the halt has come from the employers' associations and the liberal circles of the CDU. The powerful association of metalworking enterprises (Gesamtmetall) headed by Martin Kannegiesser, immediately returned the request to the sender, stamping it as "not understandable". Instead, the Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft of Cologne (IW), an economic research institute financed by Gesamtmetall, points out that wage moderation has allowed many jobs to stabilize over the years and that wage increases should always be indexed to the trend of productivity.
