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    The minimum wage in Germany: what brought the state in?

    Mabbett, Deborah (2016) The minimum wage in Germany: what brought the state in? Journal of European Public Policy 23 (8), pp. 1240-1258. ISSN 1350-1763.

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    Abstract

    A statutory minimum wage has been introduced in Germany, in the face of business opposition but abetted by union support. The political coalition in favour of minimum wage regulation brought together the centre-left and the centre-right with the argument that regulation is needed to prevent disfunctional interaction between low wages and the social security system. Thus the dualization which characterises Germany’s inegalitarian form of coordinated capitalism has provoked a corrective political response. The paper traces the long path to government intervention and assesses why employers were unable, or unwilling, to pre-empt intervention by maintaining the coverage of collective bargaining. It is argued that market liberalization has had a paradoxical effect on employer power: intense domestic as well as international competition has reduced employers’ capacity to act strategically to fend off regulation by the government.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis, available online at the link above.
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Business power, Germany, minimum wage, Tarifautonomie, unions
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences
    Depositing User: Deborah Mabbett
    Date Deposited: 25 Aug 2016 08:12
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:19
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/13591

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