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Germany has minimum wages, but not for every industry. The government standpoint was up to now that minimum wage needs to be negotiated between employers and employees and it's not the government job to set the level of the minumum wage.

This might change with the current government.

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The minimum wages in Germany, if I understand it correctly, are set by the union and employers, not the government. So there's no legal requirement to pay a minimum wage. Or is that not how it works?

It's a little more complicated, but yes [1].

The current government promised a 8,50EUR minumum wage.

Fun fact: The leftist German news paper TAZ who was fighting for minumum wage for quite some time, argued against the minumum wage for it's intern as "not possible".

[1] e.g. when you are below some wage, the government pays you some money for the "gap"

>when you are below some wage, the government pays you some money for the "gap"

Sounds like corporate welfare - companies don't have to provide a decent wage if the government will make up the difference.

Yes.

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