"Is that the thanks?": Supermarket sellers earn less in 2020

The retail chains benefit enormously from the hamster purchases during the first lockdown. The employees, however, apparently not at all – on the contrary: The wages fall in the crisis year in which the staff is praised for their work. That drives the left to the barricades.

According to a newspaper report, employees in German supermarkets earned less on average in 2020 than in the previous year. The German editorial network (RND) reports that this is based on figures from the Federal Statistical Office that the Left parliamentary group asked for. According to this, the average monthly gross earnings of employees in the retail trade with food, beverages and tobacco products in sales rooms fell from 1471 euros in the second quarter of 2019 to 1411 euros in the second quarter of this year. This corresponds to a decrease of 60 euros or around four percent.

The decline was even more pronounced among full-time employees. For them, the average gross monthly wage fell from 2,421 euros in the second quarter of 2019 to 2,254 euros in the second quarter of this year. That is 167 euros or almost seven percent less. According to the report, falling weekly hours were not responsible. Rather, the number of paid weekly working hours between the two comparison periods even increased from 35.3 to 37.9 hours, which is likely to be due to the influx of customers during the first lockdown in spring. At that time, hamster buyers had given the retail chains record sales.

"We need a wage summit"

Left parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch sharply criticized the fact that average wages are falling despite the sales records. "Is that the thanks for those who keep the country going?" He told the RND. It should not be "that the owners of Aldi, Lidl, Rewe and Edeka are having their pockets full in the Corona crisis, and nothing is getting through to the sellers who work on the attack every day and put their health at risk . " The federal government must take countermeasures, demanded Bartsch.

"We need a wages summit in the Ministry of Labor, more collective bargaining coverage and more support for the unions that are doing important work in the crisis," he said. Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) had to start talks with trade unions and industry representatives.