CNV

As of 23 September 2009 the Christian Trade Union Confederation (CGB) in the person of vice-president Reinhardt Schiller was appointed by the Federal Government as a permanent guest in the Municipal Executive Committee for minimumwages.

Schiller, who is also CGB vice-president in Baden-Wuerttemberg, honorary judge at the Federal Labour Court and Member of the Board of the World Organization of Workers (WOW), calls this a courageous as well as a just decision and perceives this as a final stroke to the attempt of employment minister Olaf Scholz to occupy this important function, with regards to the workers' representatives, merely with representatives of the German Trade Union Confederation.

The Municipal Executive Committee has the task to examine whether there are social distortions in an economic branch and whether minimum wages should be established. The Federal Government, the umbrella organizations of the employers and employees as well as the federal state governments can submit proposals to the Municipal Executive Committee. For the economic branch, for which minimum wages are to be created, a committee of experts will be established, which then determines the concrete height of the minimum wages. The minimum wages decided upon by the committee of experts are then made binding for all employers and employees in this economic branch by statutory order by the Federal Government.

Chairman of the committee is the SPD politician and former first mayor of Hamburg, Klaus von Dohnanyi. Further members are: Professor Dr. Jutta Allmendinger, Professor Dr. Wolfgang Franz, Dr. Dieter Hundt, Otto Kentzler, Professor Dr. Ernst-Otto Kempen and Michael Sommer.