Why Merz shoots a poison arrow into social democracy right now, shortly before the SPD membership begins, very few in the SPD. “I really don’t understand, so that he undermines his own career plans,” says a leading comrade.
What the CDU boss, who would soon like to become a chancellor, would have to know: for the SPD, the minimum wage is not just a topic among many, but a core element of social democratic labor and economic policy. The 15-euro minimum wage was also a central election promise for the SPD, combined with the hope of finally being perceived again as a party of workers and employees-an image that most voters are currently attributable to the AfD.
The Lower Saxony SPD member of the Bundestag Adis Ahmetović emphasizes: “As a SPD, we stand for the hardworking and efficient in the country. Service providers must be able to live on their work. A minimum wage of 15 euros is therefore socially just and at the same time offered in terms of labor market.”
But the debate also takes place on another level, according to Ahmetović to T-Online: “A higher minimum wage and the reduction of tax for low and medium-sized incomes also stabilize our democracy. Everything else would be an economic stimulus program for the AfD.”
The debate about the minimum wage shows how different the upcoming coalition understands their working basis: both unites the goal of getting the AfD small through good governing, but when choosing the instruments, the Union and SPD fundamentally differ: While the Union wants to regain the trust of citizens in politics with an asylum and economic turnaround, the SPD sees the decisive lever somewhere else: In the defusing of social injustices.
The head of the Jusos Bayern, Benedict Lang, sees the decisive mistake of the black and red coalition negotiations: “Instead of taking a look at those who have huge fortune, the black and red coalition agreement leads above all to cuts in the weakest in society,” said Lang to T-Online. At the weekend, the Bavarian Jusos unanimously rejected the coalition agreement at their state conference and called on to vote no in the SPD membership decision.
