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Last green light for the minimum wage directive in the EU. L’Ecofin gave his final go-ahead. The directive, already definitively approved by the European Parliament in September, will enter into force on the twentieth day following its publication in the Official Journal and Member States have two years to transpose it into national law. The text aims to strengthen the role of collective bargaining, which must reach up to 80%. On the other hand, there is no real minimum wage in the EU, and even less an obligation to introduce it in countries where it does not already exist, such as Italy.
Member States with a statutory minimum wage are required to provide for procedures to set and update these minimum wages according to a set of clear criteria. Updates will occur at least every two years (or no later than every four years for countries that use an automatic indexing mechanism). However, the directive does not prescribe a specific minimum wage level that Member States have to reach. As regards the promotion of collective bargaining on wage setting, one of the objectives of the directive is to increase the number of workers covered. For this, countries should promote the capacity of the social partners to engage in collective bargaining. Where the coverage rate is less than one 80% thresholdthey should define an action plan to promote it.
For the European federation of trade unions, Etuc, “Member States must now act to ensure they have laws and practices in place on time” for the two-year deadline for transposition. And “immediately follow the example of Germany increasing wages “. The country had a minimum wage below the poverty risk threshold (60% of the national average wage) and below 50% of the average wage, like two thirds of EU countries, recalls the ETUC. On 1 October he raised the minimum wage from 10.45 euros per hour to 12 euros per hour, bringing it to the 60% of the national average wage and offering a 15% wage increase to 6.64 million workers. “The cost of living crisis requires governments to immediately help lower paid workers”, comments ETUC Deputy Secretary General Esther Lynch.
In Italy the CGIL and the Uil they have opened only to a minimum wage in the form of the extension of the minimums provided for by the national collective agreements for each sector. There Cisl is flatly against it. Censis and Confcooperative released a report on Monday that recalls how 4 million workers in the private sector earn money in Italy less than 1000 euros per month, in 412 thousand full-time and permanent hires. Almost 5 million are temporary employees, part-time (even involuntary) and collaborators: a precarious condition that touches 21.7% of the 22,500,000 total employees.
