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Berlin - Germany's leading economic institutes warned on Thursday that the introduction of a minimum wage of 8.50 euros per hour, as demanded by Angela Merkel's likely future coalition partner, could lead to significant job losses in eastern Germany.
A quarter of workers in the former communist east earn less than the wage floor proposed by the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), the institutes said in their twice-yearly report, commissioned by the German government.
"A blanket minimum wage that applies to all sectors and all regions would probably have significantly more negative consequences for the labour market than the current sectoral deals," the institutes said.
Data from the IWH institute, which contributed to Thursday's report, shows that 11% of workers in western Germany earn less than the proposed €8.5 an hour, compared to 25% in eastern Germany.
Germany has resisted introducing a blanket minimum wage, in part because it was seen as too much political interference in wage bargaining between unions and employers. Instead it has continued to rely on collective wage agreements by sector and region.
But coverage by such deals has decreased to 59% of the workforce from more than 70 percent in 1998, according to the Hans Boeckler Foundation, and the low pay sector has surged in the wake of reforms to loosen up the labour market.
The SPD campaigned on the need for a minimum wage and deputy SPD leader Andrea Nahles has said the minimum wage is a condition for her party to join a coalition with Merkel.
Merkel's conservatives have shown increasing willingness to compromise. One suggestion, supported by economists, is the appointment of a non-political commission to determine how a minimum wage could be implemented and how high it should be.
"We must be careful not to destroy jobs," Merkel said on Wednesday at a congress of trade unions in Hanover.
