With Mrs. Merkel facing a series of regional elections in the coming months and federal elections in 2013, maintaining high levels of employment and support from industry are her priorities, not an across-the-board minimum wage.
On the one hand, Kshama Sawant has claimed an "historic victory" for a populist campaign that pressured Seattle's mayor, politicians and business owners to embrace by far the highest across-the-board minimum wage in the US at $15 an hour.
But there's a government-mandated, across-the-board minimum wage hike that actually is on the table.
Ikea isn't the first company to institute an across-the-board minimum wage hike in recent months.
Not long ago, I read a fine economic analysis of an across-the-board minimum wage hike in the New York Times.
We recently became the first bank to offer an across-the-board minimum wage of $15 an hour for all employees.
Cities including San Francisco and Santa Fe, N.M., have approved across-the-board minimum-wage increases in recent years, but the district would have been the first to single out large retailers.
In Germany, one of the few big rich-world countries still without a national wage floor, the incoming coalition government has just agreed on an across-the-board hourly minimum of €8.50 ($11.50) from 2015.
Then, on 1 June 2011, the whole prevailing NRSA pay scale, which includes step raises for each year of experience and, except in very bad budget years, an annual across-the-board hike, becomes the minimum standard for all subsequent hires.
He also said an across-the-board increase in the minimum wage could harm the economy.
According to people involved in the negotiations, the league's last offer was for a five-year contract with a 3percentt across-the-board increase, which would raise minimum salaries for veteran players to $41,200 from $40,000.
