Europe
(May 2017) A new report from the ETUI research institute reveals that workers in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have seen an increasing pay gap with Germany after many years when there had been pay convergence. Reacting to the report the ETUC argues that a weakening of collective bargaining in these companies is part of the problem and calls on national governments and European Union institutions to promote collective bargaining.
Bulgaria
Croatia
Czech Republic
Estonia
Hungary
Latvia
Lithuania
Poland
Romania
Slovak Republic
Slovenia
An analysis by the European Trade Union Institute shows that wage convergence between East and West in Europe was steady up until 2008. However, since then the trend has either stalled or gone into reverse. Taking national average pay as a percentage of the average across the pre-2004 EU15, Croatia and Hungary show the largest increase in the pay gap since 2008. There were also increases in Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland and Romania.Most progress was made in Bulgaria but from a very low level (11.8%) to 17.7%, still less than a fifth of average pay in the West.
The Vision white-collar trade union has updated figures to show the continuing large pay gaps in certain professions. For the third year running the union has compared pay rates for economists, human resources specialists and IT technicians in male-dominated and female-dominated sectors. Vision says that these pay gaps are not only large but getting larger. In one specific comparison for two identical workers both aged 41, an economist in a female-dominated sector is SEK 17080 (€1900) per month in salary, compared to civilian economist in a male-dominated sector . That's 204,950 per year
