German Unions and the Working Poor

By Thomas Klikauer

December 2, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Image by Evelyn Simak, Creative Commons 2.0

Ever since Shipler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Working Poor: Invisible in America (2004), the term working poor has entered the realm beyond industrial sociology.

Put rather simply, the working poor are workers whose income has fallen below the poverty line. They work but remain under the poverty threshold. They work but are poor – these are the working poor.

In Germany, these are workers with an income of €12.50 [$13] in 2022. These workers make up a whopping 19% of all workers in this country – almost every fifth job.

In a long-awaited and very recent decision, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on November 11, 2025, only partially upheld Denmark’s lawsuit and annulled two provisions in the EU Minimum Wage Directive.

These were criteria for determining and updating wages, and a provision that prevents a reduction in wages. According to the judgment, the EU’s Minimum Wage Directive stands.

German trade unions were relieved by the ECJ’s explanations on the application of the EU Minimum Wage Directive. It is clear that European governments remain obliged to decisively improve collective bargaining. Germany’s government has to do some homework. Three tasks are issued for Germany to beef up low wages:

1. Laws to support the working poor must come without restrictions.
2. More generally binding collective agreements (the Allgemeinverbindlichkeitserklärung or AVE) are needed. An AVE is a very specific peculiarity of German labor law. According to German law, such an AVE is issued in accordance with §5 of Germany’s Collective Agreement Act. It means that a collective bargaining agreement becomes binding for all employers and employees not previously bound by collective agreements within an industry and the scope of a collective agreement. In other words, an AVE extends a collective bargaining agreement to all workers in an industry.
3. Working and labor relations without collective bargaining or an AVE must finally come to an end.

Since German collective agreements cover significantly less than 80% of all workers, Germany’s government is obliged to finally submit an action plan to increase collective bargaining rights.

The EU’s Minimum Wage Directive is intended to protect workers from poverty and to promote appropriate minimum wages and collective bargaining standards. The EU still does not set a minimum wage, but it does provide – among other things – a reference point of 60% of a median wage. This should guide EU member states.

Germany’s minimum wage will increase in 2026: €13.90 per hour (January 1, 2026) and €14.60 (January 1, 2027) – even though German trade unions argued that it requires €15 per hour. This was not quite reached. A survey conducted by Forsa (June 2025) showed that two thirds (66%) of Germans support a minimum wage of €15 ($17.50].

Overall, the balance sheet for Germany over the past 10 years is rather modest compared to other EU countries. Germany’s low-income workers have benefited in particular. In East Germany, the increase has been substantial. The minimum wage has helped reduce wage inequalities across various regions of Germany.

This is by no means self-starting. If there are only small increases, as is currently the case, this weakens the positive effect of the minimum wage. Stronger increases are needed.

While wage development in the lower income range almost stagnated between 2008 and 2013, there were significant increases after the introduction of the minimum wage in 2015, especially in Eastern Germany.

The working poor in Germany are not just individual cases. There is a structure of low-wage employment in Germany. Those affected by low wages are not a homogeneous group. On the contrary, certain employment groups carry a particularly high risk of earning only a low hourly wage.

This is particularly pronounced among mini-jobbers at 80.8% of a full income. They have a much higher low-wage risk than full-time workers. The next groups are part-time workers. At about 23.8%, women have a higher low-wage risk than men at 14.6%. Temporary employees are significantly more often affected by low wages, and the same applies to non-permanent employees.

Age also continues to influence the risk of low wages. About half of all workers under the age of 25 earn an hourly wage below the low-wage threshold. For older workers – over the age of 54 – the low-wage risk is slightly above average at just under 22%. Migrant workers also face an above-average low-wage risk at 29.5%.

On the other hand, workers with an academic degree (8%) have a significantly lower risk of low wages than workers with vocational training. However, workers with other qualifications carry a much higher risk of low wages.

Despite the high low-wage risk among low-skilled workers, 57% of low-wage earners had completed vocational training and another 14% even had a university degree. The vast majority of low-wage workers had a medium or high skill level. A little more than one quarter of low-wage workers have no formal qualification.

Women accounted for around 60% of all low-wage employees. The majority of low-wage earners come from the middle-age groups (25–54 years: 54%). However, the share of older people (from age 54) is 29.5%.

Low-wage jobs in Germany are by no means limited to part-time employees and mini-jobbers. Most of Germany’s low-paid workers have completed vocational training, are employed on an indefinite basis, or work full-time. This indicates that low-wage jobs are by no means confined to the fringe. Instead, these workers at the very bottom can be found in standard forms of employment. In other words, the precariat is advancing into standard employment.

While being part of Germany’s low-wage sector, migrant workers assure the prosperity of Germany. Yet even cleaners struggle for dignity. These migrant workers – while ensuring Germany’s prosperity – live in barracks and sleep in their cars. Those who are cheated out of their wages are threatened and beaten. Recently, Germany’s influential “Deutschlandradio” called it “Germany, Your Slaves” – Deutschland, Deine Sklaven.

Migrant workers in Germany’s low-wage sector are considered invisible. They are confined to the lowest level of the pyramid. Capitalism produces a hierarchical labor market, hierarchical workplace structures, and hierarchical work regimes.

Yet, in Germany’s low-wage sectors, it is the migrant who makes the hotel beds, washes towels, cleans offices, brushes toilets, sterilizes surgery theatres, works as a window cleaner, labors in aged-care facilities, empties rubbish bins, and cares for the elderly and the lodgers. Low-paid migrant workers dig up asparagus, harvest strawberries, and pick apples.

They build apartments, pave sidewalks, clean universities, wash your car, clean street furniture, deliver parcels, cool airline food, and scrub shopping-mall floors. They slaughter pigs, cut up chickens, flip burgers, make kebabs, do the checkout at petrol stations, and disassemble turkeys.

They wash and care for old people who are no longer able to do it themselves. They rush through warehouses and deliver the pizza, jeans, and Christmas presents.

Behind these statistics are real lives and real work situations of migrants who labor in different industries in Germany’s low-wage sector. Just as Pulitzer Prize winner Shipler says in Invisible in America, those who clean up Germany’s Stadtbild and feed Germany’s growing number of elderly in care homes are Germany’s invisibles – they have no voice.

Yet they come from Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and many other countries.

Even though Germans often do not see them – or do not want to see them – migrants work in many industries, including construction and slaughterhouses, assuring that even the neo-Nazi AfD voter can have his beloved Schnitzel and Hackbraten, as well as keeping Germany’s infamous Autobahn highways free of snow and ice.

Virtually all of this underpins Germany’s position as one of the world’s great economies – third place after the USA and China. Measured by GDP, it stands at 5 trillion US dollars (2025).

Meanwhile, corporate managers have invented a sheer endless number of employment-contracts to ensure low-wage workers remain confined to the precariat – outsourcing and subcontracting being only two examples. They work in what Germany’s foremost investigative journalist, Günter Wallraff, called in 1983 Ganz Unten – “down there.” The condition of Germany’s working poor is by no means a new issue.

Then as now, working conditions are defined – impressively and comprehensively – by discrimination, racism, xenophobia, fear, fraud, wage theft, violence, and human trafficking. This is part of everyday life in Germany’s low-wage sector and for far too many migrant workers.

Many of those affected live in the shade – far removed from the glittery world of the neoliberal “winner takes it all” society. Germany’s working poor slog along – often under very poor, unhygienic, illness-causing, and inhumane conditions.

They live in cramped, sometimes unsanitary accommodation, working in areas where occupational safety regulations are given little consideration. Thanks to the triumph of the neoliberal anti-state, “less bureaucracy,” “eliminate red tape,” etc. ideology, workplace inspections are rare, if they happen at all.

Meanwhile, health insurance is often insufficient, irregular, or simply non-existent. No help in the case of illness or accident. More often than not, the boundaries between legal and illegal business are blurred – this too is nothing new in capitalism, as Friedrich Engels noted in his 1844 classic on the condition of the working class, generally defined by exploitation.

This occurs not just in the mentioned industries, but reflects structural conditions that are, seemingly, very difficult to change, as the working poor are hit with a triple whammy:

• Education: poor education (not knowing their rights);
• Insecurity: frequent job changes due to high insecurity; and
• Threats: threats by their bosses – which, in the case of migrant workers, include threats of deportation.

Yet there are strategies of open and covert resistance, such as:

1. Evidence: collecting evidence (wagetheftisacrime.com, photographing timesheets, etc.);
2. Online: exchanging information via WhatsApp groups or Facebook forums;
3. Information: gathering information on minimum-wage law;
4. Unions: calling local trade unions or NGOs (e.g., Amnesty International); and
5. Solidarity: creating solidarity among co-workers – what Pyotr Kropotkin once called “mutual aid.”Email

Thomas Klikauer

Thomas Klikauer has over 800 publications (including 12 books) and writes regularly for BraveNewEurope (Western Europe), the Barricades (Eastern Europe), Buzzflash (USA), Counterpunch (USA), Countercurrents (India), Tikkun (USA), and ZNet (USA). One of his books is on Managerialism (2013).

Italy's luxury brands shaken by sweatshop probes

Rome (AFP) – A series of investigations into exploitative work conditions within fashion subcontractors has roiled Italy's luxury industry, with the government decrying attacks on "Made in Italy".


Issued on: 03/12/2025 - RFI

Tod's iconic leather shoes are handmade, but Italian prosecutors say they have found 'degrading' conditions at its Chinese subcontractors © Gabriel BOUYS / AFP/File

Five fashion brands have been put under court administration since 2024 following probes by Milan prosecutors that uncovered worker abuses and a lack of oversight into the supply chains of some of Italy's most respected brands.

Most recently, lawyers for luxury leather company Tod's were due in a Milan court Wednesday, where prosecutors want to impose a temporary advertising ban and outside administrators in light of what they have called "malicious" actions by the company.

The investigations led by prosecutor Paolo Storari have cast a spotlight on the dark underside of the luxury industry.

At issue is the near-ubiquitous practice of brands subcontracting work to suppliers, who in turn contract to others, amid ever-tighter margins and scant oversight of labour conditions.


To date, investigations have targeted Loro Piana, Dior's Italian subsidiary Manufactures Dior, Giorgio Armani Operations and Alviero Martini -- and prosecutors have suggested more probes could come.

Italy's government has gone on the offensive, with Industry Minister Adolfo Urso saying the reputation of Italian brands was "under attack".

It has proposed a certificate for luxury companies to show they are in compliance with current law -- a measure critics have called toothless, in part because it is voluntary and would unduly shield brands from liability.

"We are taking concrete measures to firmly defend Italian fashion, to protect its reputation and the values that have made it synonymous with beauty, quality and authenticity," Urso said in October.

'Chain of exploitation'

Prosecutors last month said Tod's -- whose leather loafers can reach over $1,000 -- and three of its executives had "full awareness" of the exploitation of Chinese subcontractors but failed to set up systems to prevent it.

Tod's allegedly ignored its own audits revealing working hours and wage violations -- with workers paid as little as 2.75 euros per hour -- breaches of safety measures and what prosecutors called "degrading" sleeping areas within the factory.

Under Italian law, companies can be held responsible for offences committed by representatives -- such as approved suppliers -- acting in their interest.

Advocates for fashion industry workers have for decades pointed to widespread abuses in the supply chain.

Suppliers "are at the mercy of big brands that impose commercial conditions, starting with prices that are too low to cover all costs", said Deborah Lucchetti, national coordinator of the Clean Clothes Campaign in Italy.

That, in turn, fuels a system in which first-tier suppliers turn to subcontractors, imposing ever more stringent terms, which leads to labour abuses, most often against migrants.

"It's a chain of exploitation," she told AFP.

Italy's fashion suppliers are predominately small- and medium-sized companies, tens of thousands of whom have shuttered in recent years, according to industry associations, amid a luxury downturn and higher production costs.

Unable to invest, due to lack of guaranteed work from the commissioning brands and hyper-thin margins, the suppliers stay small. When a big order arrives, they turn to subcontractors for quick help, a system that "effectively pushes players in the supply chain to engage in illegal conduct", said Lucchetti.

Prosecutors said both Tod's and Loro Piana could not have been unaware that one of their main suppliers was externalising all its production -- given that the supplier did not have any production equipment, such as sewing machines, in its facility.

The companies targeted thus far have variously responded by cutting ties with the suppliers, condemning their actions, or blaming them for concealing abuses.

Reputational risk

Amid the reputational risk, some brands have sought to reassure consumers.

Last week, one of Italy's top luxury brands, Prada, invited journalists to its Scandicci factory outside Florence, showing the step-by-step transformation of supple leather into luxury handbags.

Asked about the investigations, Prada's Chief Marketing Officer Lorenzo Bertelli, who also heads social responsibility, said production had never been an afterthought for the company.

Other fashion executives, Bertelli said, don't view production "as an area of responsibility": "And this has led to many of things you have read in the newspapers."

Prada does not disclose how much of its production is in-house, but says it is the highest in the industry. Prada owns 25 factories, 23 of which are located in Italy.

Bertelli called it a "constant battle" to keep Prada's supply chain clean.

"We must constantly carry out inspections or checks on suppliers, this is the daily work we do."

© 2025 AFP

The Scapegoating of Peasants for the Pollution Crisis

Bodapati Srujana

 December 1, 2025

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Photo by Ronak Naik

It is that time of year again when India’s national capital Delhi’s air quality turned acutely hazardous. Official Indian air quality indicators hit their maximum adverse readings of 500, while indices based on international norms shoot past 1,000 or even 2,000 —a level that effectively turned the city into a gas chamber. The thick smog, loaded with toxic gases, seeps into every corner of the city, including inside people’s homes, with residents having nowhere safe to go.

Winter, not just in Delhi, but across the Indo-Gangetic plains, which house nearly half the country’s population, has become increasingly toxic in the past decade and more. While emissions from vehicles are a major contribution to the hazardous air, firewood use in rural households for cooking and heating, paddy-stubble burning after the Kharif harvest (October–November), and industrial pollution, smoke from brick kilns, open incineration of garbage, together produce huge quantity of pollutants that remained trapped above the ground for prolonged periods in winters.

The winter conditions on the northern plains —low temperatures, high atmospheric moisture, weak winds, and the Himalayan barrier— create a stable inversion layer that prevents the dispersion of pollutants. The result is a persistent blanket of smog over cities and towns of the region, broken only by occasional days of showers in January that provide relief for very brief periods.

While toxic air in winters is far more geographically pervasive, covering multiple states of northern India, the pollution in Delhi attracts much attention, due to it being the seat of the country’s political, administrative, judicial and media elite —whose privileged spaces are not spared of the toxic air. In fact, winter pollution in some of these smaller cities and towns is worse than in Delhi, but their plight rarely registers in the media.

The hazardous winter pollution has created a serious health crisis, with rise in respiratory illnesses, higher rates of hypertension and cancer, cognitive decline in children, greater disease burden overall, and increased mortality among both the elderly and infants. Its impact is most severe on the bottom 90 percent of the population, who face an underfunded public health system, cannot afford or access adequate care, and for whom illness means lost wages and costly medical visits and tests that push them even further into poverty.

Identifying the core causes of pollution and addressing the health crisis, without placing the cost of prevention on the most vulnerable —the working class and the peasantry— is an urgent task for the Indian government

But the Indian government, instead of formulating a comprehensive plan to tackle the pollution crisis, has shifted the blame onto farmers in Haryana, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh —treating post-harvest stubble burning as the primary cause of Delhi’s toxic air and pushing states to impose heavy fines on cultivators, ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 30,000.

Increasing Automobiles – The Main Culprit

In reality, the biggest driver of Delhi’s pollution is the rising ownership and use of automobiles. Studies estimate that more than half of the city’s air pollution comes from vehicular emissions. This is hardly surprising, given that Delhi has more cars than the next three biggest Indian cities—Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai —combined, and 90 percent of them are private vehicles.

It’s not just Delhi. Rising car ownership among the top decile has made road congestion and heavy pollution routine even in semi-urban areas in India, that once had relatively clean air.

Car ownership and road transportation have been placed at the centre of India’s neoliberal growth model. With the push toward privatisation, successive governments have deliberately weakened the less-polluting public transportation system, including the railways. State-owned Indian Railways has been left with ageing, overstretched infrastructure: its share of freight transportation has collapsed from around 60 percent in 1991 to about 29 percent today, and its passenger share has fallen in parallel

As rail capacity stagnated, road transportation —especially the use of personal and commercial vehicles— was allowed to expand unchecked. The automobile sector now accounts for roughly half of manufacturing value added. It has been propped up by the rapid expansion of the road network, even as public road transport has been left to decay: state road transport undertakings, which provide mass public transit, have been chronically neglected. While the number of cars, jeeps, and taxis has grown at a compound annual rate of 8.56 percent, the number of buses —the mainstay of public road transport— has increased by only 2.48 percent.

Over the past few decades, the Union government has poured a disproportionate share of its capital expenditure into road construction, to encourage an automobile-centric economy. India now has one of the largest road networks in the world —out of sync with its geography and population density— and it continues to expand rapidly while the railway system stagnates. India’s total road length even exceeds China’s, despite China having a comparable population, three times the land area, and a far larger economy. By contrast, India’s railway route length has stagnated: the two countries had roughly the same route length around 2010, but India’s has grown by only about 6 percent in the two decades since, while China’s has expanded by roughly 65 percent over the same period and is now about 60 percent longer than India’s.

Poverty and Pollution

If affluence drives pollution at one end, the skewed, trickle-down pattern of India’s economic growth leaves millions of families still dependent on collected firewood for household energy and forces much of the peasantry to resort to stubble burning. The limited economic growth that trickles down gives them little capacity to adopt alternatives. This, too, worsens air quality

It is estimated that about 30 percent of pollution in north Indian winters is caused by the burning of biomass – wood and dung used for daily cooking and winter heating, along with stubble burning in late October and November.

Government schemes intended to help households shift from firewood to LPG remain underfunded, making the transition too expensive for much of rural India, where firewood collected by women continues to be a major energy source. With electric heating simply out of reach for the majority, open fires remain the main source of winter heating in rural north India —and even for migrant workers in the cities.

Are the peasants at fault?

The smoke from stubble burning in mid-October to November adds a temporary spike to an already high baseline of winter pollution generated by motor vehicles and other sources. Indian media seizes on this spike as the main culprit. Yet pollution levels remain just as severe through December and January —long after stubble burning has stopped— making it clear that the primary drivers of toxic air in Delhi and the wider region are the persistent sources, above all motor vehicles.

In the years 2023, Delhi had just a single day where the air quality was shown to be good. In 2024, Delhi did not have a single day of good air quality. All this can not be due to stubble burning which is limited to a month in winter.

Unwilling to confront the core issue of vehicular pollution —which would require abandoning its prioritisation of private road transport over cheaper public alternatives— the government has instead chosen to target farmers.

It is a fact that stubble burning worsens air quality. Farmers are not unaware of this; the smoke chokes their own villages before it ever reaches cities like Delhi. But with narrow margins and declining state support, the peasantry lacks workable alternatives. If stubble isn’t cleared quickly, the sowing of the Rabi crop is delayed, disrupting the entire crop cycle. Climate change has made this worse. For the past five to six years, the southwest monsoon has been arriving late in north India. June, once the normal sowing month, is now too dry, pushing sowing into July and shifting the Kharif harvest deeper into winter. At times the monsoon even lingers into October —as it did this year— so paddy ready for harvest gets drenched and must stand in the field for extra weeks to dry, delaying the harvest. As a result, there is little time after Kharif paddy for crop residue to decompose naturally before fields must be prepared for Rabi wheat.

In India where the majority of the peasants are small and marginal, who barely break even, it is the government’s responsibility to invest in technologies and develop crop varieties suited to the changing climate. Instead, the Indian state has been trying to withdraw even the limited support that exists, which is largely restricted to MSP (Minimum Support Price) for paddy and wheat. (The government has been trying to do away with MSP and fully hand agricultural markets to corporates, which resulted in historic farmers agitation in 2020-21).

The government frequently urges farmers to diversify into different crops to conserve water, to adjust to climate change, to withstand market vagaries, and so on,but offers no meaningful price support for alternative crops, invests little in new varieties and agricultural technologies, leaving it to agribusinesses, thereby making crop diversification unviable for farmers.

Rather than invest in technologies to manage crop residue and provide the financial support needed for farmers to adopt them, the government has chosen to impose heavy fines on an already strained peasantry while encouraging a steady stream of negative media coverage that paints farmers as the primary culprits of pollution. This framing serves a political purpose: it erodes public sympathy for farmers and lays the groundwork for future legislation that favours corporate interests seeking greater control over agriculture.

The scapegoating of farmers for pollution serves a dual purpose for the corporates whose interests the Indian state actively promotes. It lays the groundwork for a future push to corporatise agriculture by portraying farmers’ ‘backward practices’ as in need of modernisation. It also diverts attention from the real culprits —the automobile industry, the rise in private vehicle use, and the systematic neglect of public transport.

This article was produced by Globetrotter. 

Bodapati Srujana works in the area of agrarian relations in India, having participated in several studies around the country. She often writes on issues in the Indian Economy.

Health risks of air pollution from stubble burning poorly understood in various parts of Punjab, India

Research Institute for Humanity and Nature

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

While many recognized severe air pollution in Delhi, fewer viewed local air quality as severe. Most households believed that smoke from stubble burning did not affect their health, even though many agreed that the practice is a major issue.

view more 

Credit: Aakash Project, RIHN

In Punjab, India, paddy stubble burning is a widespread agricultural practice that contributes to seasonal air pollution in the region and beyond. However, the extent to which residents recognize its impact on their own environment and health or in the highly populated areas of Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) has remained unclear. To address this gap, the Aakash Project (led by researchers from Hokkaido University in collaboration with Indian research partners) conducted interviews with 2,202 households across 22 districts in Punjab.

 

Urban air pollution is recognized, but local sources are undervalued

About 46% of respondents perceived air pollution in Delhi as “severe,” while only 25% viewed air pollution in their own areas of Punjab as severe.

 

Personal health experience increases awareness

Households with family members experiencing respiratory or cardiovascular problems were more likely to recognize smoke from stubble burning as harmful and to view the practice as a pressing issue requiring action.

The study reveals a perception gap: while urban air pollution is widely acknowledged, the contribution of locally generated smoke from stubble burning remains less recognized. Personal or familial health experiences and health literacy play a crucial role in shaping awareness. These insights suggest that efforts to reduce stubble burning and improve air quality must include clear, locally grounded communication on health impacts, supported by accessible and visible air quality information.

 

*The Aakash project is exploring ways to shift people's behaviour to sustainable agriculture in the Punjab region to reduce the health hazards caused by air pollution, by clarifying observation-based relationship between straw burning and local air pollution; raising awareness of the importance of maintaining clean air among residents; and proposing the effective and beneficial use of rice straw by farmers.

 

Article information

Title： Perceptions of air pollution from stubble burning and its health risks in Punjab, India

Journal：Scientific Reports

Authors: Zhesi Yang, Kayo Ueda, Tomohiro Umemura, Kazunari Onishi, Hiroaki Terasaki, Tomoki Nakayama, Yutaka Matsumi, Kamal Vatta, Hikaru Araki, Sachiko Hayashida, Prabir K Patra

Article Publication Date： October 27, 2025

URL：https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-21235-8

 

###

About RIHN

The Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) is a national institute established in Kyoto in 2001. RIHN aims, through research that integrates the humanities and sciences, to address environmental issues concerning the relationship between "humanity" and "nature" in a broad sense as fundamental issues of human culture. We strive not only to engage the research community but also to collaborate with diverse stakeholders in society, including local residents, to find solutions to global environmental problems. 

For more detail, visit https://www.chikyu.ac.jp/rihn_e/.

---

Journal

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-025-21235-8 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Perceptions of air pollution from stubble burning and its health risks in Punjab, India