Some 6.2 million workers in Germany are set to benefit from a minimum wage increase passed by lawmakers. The hike comes as inflation soars in Germany.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made raising the minimum wage a key plank in his election platform and, on Friday, lawmakers passed a bill increasing the minimum wage to 12 ($12.90) per hour as of October 1 — an increase of 2.18 per hour.
The increase will mean 400 extra per month for people with a monthly income of 1,700, according to Labor Minister Hubertus Heil.
"That's not the world, but is makes a noticeable difference in the wallet," Heil said before the vote in the Bundestag, the lower house of German parliament.
Germany introduced a national minimum wage in 2015 at the insistence of Scholz's center-left Social Democrats, who at the time were junior partners in conservative former Chancellor Angela Merkel's government.
"Many citizens of our country work a lot but earn little — that must change," Scholz wrote in a tweet when his Cabinet agreed to the increase in February. "For me, one of the most important laws and a question of respect."
The bill to increase the minimum wage passed by a wide margin with 400 in favor, 41 against and 200 abstentions, mainly from the opposition bloc of the Christian Democrat Union and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU).
Politicians from the center-right CDU/CSU emphasized they were not against raising the minimum wage but the way Scholz's coalition...
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