Tuesday, October 21, 12:15-1:15pm | Hauser Hall 104, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA
The EU Minimum Wage Directive, adopted in 2022, marks a paradigm shift in EU labor policy. While the EU has long contributed to weakening trade unions and collective bargaining systems through its liberalization policy, the new directive now explicitly aims to strengthen labor market institutions. In order to promote adequate minimum wages, statutory minimum wages should be raised and collective bargaining systems strengthened all over Europe. The Directive obliges all EU member States with collective bargaining coverage of below 80% to establish national action plans to promote collective bargaining, with the aim of progressively increasing collective bargaining coverage.
The presentation will discuss the implementation of the directive in individual Member States to date and identify the most important instruments that can contribute to increase collective bargaining coverage through a strengthening of sectoral bargaining.
Further reading
Torsten Müller and Thorsten Schulten, The road to 80% collective bargaining coverage. The need for ambitious national action plans under the Minimum Wage Directive, ETUI Policy Brief No. 1/2025, Brussels, https://www.etui.org/publications/road-80-collective-bargaining-coverage
ABOUT DR. THORSTEN SCHULTEN
Dr. Thorsten Schulten is the scientific head of the Collective Agreement Archive of the Institute for Economic and Social Research (WSI) of the Hans Böckler Foundation which is closely related to the German trade unions. He is also teaching as an honorary professor at the University of Tübingen.
