In this case respect for national diversity is essential

The viability of the social model depends on its consistency with the wage status. Modern poverty including is shaking of the standards, such as collective agreements of branches, which provided a certain solidarity between employees. The costs of a solidarity system are less easily accepted when exposure to the competition becomes intense. The minimum wage is at the heart of the contradiction: to comply with the alleged low productivity of low-skilled worker, it is hardly a minimum subsistence income.

The trade unions try to coordinate wage negotiations in Europe, with several objectives: contain the risks of competitive deflation; organize low-wage countries catching up; to promote a wage incentive plan for growth. But the obstacles are many: the trials of coordination by the Summit are little in decision-making on local practices; national systems of negotiation have been sensitive degradation without so frankly converge between them; the branch is not as easily relevant space of negotiation at European level as at the national level; minimum wages remain a national matter.

The Organization of community and national competences does not create the conditions for a negotiation that articulates the productivity of employment, its quality and its compensation. Appropriate compensation is part of the quality of employment in analyses of the Commission, but the remuneration is not an area of Community competence, while the broad economic policy guidelines emit a strict message against the claims of a more equitable sharing of productivity gains. The integrated guidelines 2005-2008 care however about the problem when they call on Member States to "encourage the establishment of framework conditions for wage bargaining systems".

In this case, respect for national diversity is essential. Salary upgrading must be commensurate with that of productivity. Too fast, it is contrary to the competitiveness of the country concerned; too low, it is felt as a dumping on the part of the partner countries. A balanced way is certainly not easy. But it is also the choice of development model plays in these arbitrations. If you compare the Spain and the Portugal, the Portuguese competitiveness benefited during a time of a lesser wage catch-up in Spain, but it suffers heavily today of confinement in a little dynamic productive specialization too relied on low labour costs.

Primary equation which is dependent on the strength of the growth of strict compliance with wage moderation is not validated by the facts. If respect is identified by the decline in wage share in value added, the performance of growth in European countries are rather inversely proportional to respect ten years! However, the ability to find solid wage compromise between employers and unions is a differentiation criterion better founded. This ability to stabilizing expectations of businesses and households. Companies who have negotiated salary prospects are not used to excessive substitution of capital for labour.

The maintenance of wage increases below the productivity gains remains the principal recommendation of the ECB and the BEPGS, the broad economic policy guidelines. The transition to monetary Union did not in countries which have completed disinflation to this union to break with rampant wage deflation that participates in the soft and versatile Eurozone growth. Improve the conclusive scope of wage negotiations would contribute to unload the ECB of excess liability and relax its economic management. Its policy serves as a default wage standard, which is a preventive parade to wage increases on higher growth, under the pretext of inflationary threat.

The dissolution of the Fordist regime from wage regime is still largely unknown. Getting bogged down in a situation of persistent unemployment plays the leading role to disconnect the gains from productivity gains wage purchasing power. The salary issue is a shipyard in escheat of European integration, while the wage income of the majority of European citizens from age-based. If it is clearly an area where uniformity in forced March is excluded and that appeals to the initiative of the social actors, public authorities have responsibilities to assume. Start by thinking in common on what can be, depending on the country where working and we are living, operational and decent minimum wages would be a start.