Germany: Public sector pay settlement agreed

A pay settlement for the 2 million employees of the German federal Government and local authorities, signed in March 2010, will enable them to catch up with private sector workers after several years of below-average wage increases.

Talks over the agreement, which covers public employees who are not established civil servants (civil servants' pay is set separately by administrative decree), broke down in February 2010 and two conciliators, one a Social Democrat politician and the other a Christian Democrat, were called in.