Safeguarding or sidestepping? The centre-right, the minimum wage, and collective bargaining autonomy in the German and Italian low-wage s ectors

Opposition to statutory minimum wages by right-of-centre parties has typically been framed around employment externalities. Yet in Germany before the adoption of a statutory minimum wage, and in Italy today, right-of-centre parties have often invoked a different rationale: defending collective bargaining autonomy against state interference. In this paper, we investigate how centre-right parties in both countries have engaged with collective bargaining while each facing a specific scenario: declining coverage in Germany, and weakened representativeness in Italy. Examining recent policy proposals such as linking public procurement to collective bargaining agreements or regulating union representativeness, we find that these measures were largely opposed by the centre-right. A quantitative text analysis of parliamentary debates further reveals a strategic use of collective bargaining discussions by centre-right parties: In Germany, salience peaked before the statutory minimum wage was introduced but fell sharply thereafter, while collective bargaining gained prominence discursively for the Italian centre-right only in conjunction with the minimum wage debate. Complemented by stakeholder interviews and electoral data analysis, our findings suggest that this trend reflects ideological as well as electoral dynamics, as centre-right parties draw on significant support from small business owners in sectors with weak collective bargaining. Appeals to bargaining autonomy thus function less as substantive commitments than as instruments to preserve the status quo in the low-wage sector.