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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Merkel is moving to the left


Angela Merkel is taking her Christian Democratic Union party to the left in a move to try and keep power.  Merkel and the CDU have lost multiple state level elections this last year as the voters blame them for using the wealth of Germany to bail out all of Europe.


So-called "Conservatives" around the world always move to the left thinking they will get votes


German Chancellor Angela Merkel has performed another big U-turn by calling for a minimum wage, which she had opposed until now. She is sharpening her party's social profile in response to the euro crisis -- and, possibly, to secure her power by preparing another 'grand coalition' with the Social Democrats.

The so-called German "Conservatives" are in a panic after having lost multiple state elections this last year.  See THE FEDERALIST - "Merkel crushed again in German elections." 

There are some striking examples of Merkel vacating positions that had long been core to the agenda of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party reports Spiegel On-line.


  • Mandatory military service, that bedrock of CDU policy for decades? Merkel ditched it last year.
  • Nuclear power.  Merkel arranged for an early exit just months after extending the lifetimes of reactors.
  • The three-tiered system of secondary schools? A thing of the past.

And now it's the turn of social policy. At its party congress in November, the CDU plans to pass a motion that has long been the exclusive domain of the left-wing opposition parties: a minimum wage.

The CDU doesn't want the level to be set by the government, but it plans to seek a mandatory wage agreed by employers and trade unions in sectors that don't yet have a minimum wage. The lowest hourly pay rate is to be similar to the level that currently applies for temporary work: €7.79 ($10.92) in western Germany and €6.89 ($9.65) per hour in the east.

The new approach fits in with Merkel's drive to sharpen the CDU's social profile in response to the euro crisis , which has triggered a wave of public anger at the financial industry and concern that ordinary taxpayers are being made to foot the bill for profligate high-debt euro member states.

A BIG TURN TO THE LEFT  -  Together with Labor Minister Ursula von der Leyen, and much to the annoyance of the center-left Social Democrats, Merkel has been wooing voters with decidedly leftist policies of late. Von der Leyen plans to give pensioners a financial boost to combat old-age poverty, she has taken on discount supermarkets and has criticized German companies for resisting her plans for a minimum quota of women on company boards

"The question is no longer whether we're going to have a minimum wage but how one negotiates the right level," von der Leyen said in a recent interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. It sounded like she had been taking lessons from SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel.

The trade unions are predictably elated by Merkel's leftward shift. A general minimum wage had been expressly ruled out in the coalition agreement reached between her conservatives and their junior partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), after the 2009 election.

There is a lot of skepticism about the plan both within her own conservative ranks and in the FDP. Many representatives of the pro-business arm of the CDU regard minimum wages as bad for corporate competitiveness.

The co-leader of the opposition Greens, Cem Özdemir, said: "It is high time that the CDU at last gives up its opposition to the minimum wage. It's a central question of justice that people should be able to live off the money they earn."

The new approach is a warning to the Free Democrat Party. Merkel knows that the minimum wage is just about the last thing the FDP wants to push through in the final two years of the center-right government's term.  The fact that she is so ready to ignore the FDP is a measure of the low esteem in which she holds the party.

New friends: Angela Merkel with the head of Germany's DGB trade union federation, Michael Sommer. Organized labor are pleased with the chancellor's U-turn on minimum wages.

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