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In Germany, Precarious Labour Spikes Even with Low Joblessness

15 September, 2011

An oddity has struck Germany: as unemployment has reached the lowest levels in decades, the number of precarious workers in low-wage temporary jobs has risen dramatically. The increase in temporary work in 2010 jumped 32.5% over the previous year, reports Germany’s Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden.

A full 75% of all recruitments in 2010 came in the temporary sector and temporary work accounted for 50% of all salaried recruitments, data that places a different light on Germany’s economic success story.

This trend has not caught Germany’s unions by surprise, with national labour centre DGB making it a priority at its May 2010 Congress to campaign for equal pay, equal rights, and fixed probation periods on temporary workers at its May 2010 Congress. Replacing permanent employees with temp workers (“Stammbelegschaft”) is regressive and Germany’s unions look upon it as wage slashing. In the metal industry alone, wages of temporary workers average €776 per month less than permanent staff.

In 2010, according the Wiesbaden Office, 7.4 million people took low-wage temporary work, or “mini-jobs”, as created by 2003 legislation with the intent that such work would lead to a full-time, permanent job. It has not as evidenced by Germany’s temporary employers’ federation predicting that double-digit jumps in temp work will occur in 2011 and beyond.

Consider: in hotel and catering work, there is one temp for each German worker in which full social contributions are paid. In trade and retail, that ratio is two to one.

One answer advocated by German unions is a cross-sector minimum wage through legislation, and tougher legislative measures to discourage all forms of precarious work. Equal pay for equal work has become a battle cry for Germany’s trade union movement and moving toward that will restore a fairer order of the labour market.