Germany, Denmark, Italy, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland do not have a statutory minimum wage. Capitalist hell-holes all.
A common feature of this group of countries is the high coverage rate of union agreed minimum wages, generally laid down in sectoral agreements by employers associations with unions.
The percentage of employees covered by union agreed minimum wages ranges from approximately 70% in Germany and Norway to almost 100% in Austria and Italy (though excluding irregular workers, who make up a relatively large share of the Italian labour market). Italy has a huge underground economy.
In Denmark, the percentage of employees covered by union agreed wages is estimated at between 81% and 90%, while in Finland and Sweden, this figure is 90%.
Scandinavia is a capitalist hell-hole that every true blue social democrat must denounce without reservation. Their so called left-wing parties as traitors to the working class and to the least powerful of all workers – the low-paid and unskilled.
The poor should not have to rely on scraps from the tables of the middle-class unions. They have been deserted by their so called social democratic governments.
Whether the low-paid and low-skilled get a fair consideration from unions in collective bargaining given these unions will be driven by majority rule – by the median voter/union member who is older, senior and of high job tenure – is a question worth exploring.
The evidence is not good. In the Finnish depression in the early 1990s, the unions refused to agree to nominal wage cuts despite 20% unemployment – the worst since the 1930s. They protect those that still had a job.
Most European labour markets are dual labour markets. Unions and employment protection laws ensure that they are made up of two-tier systems with ultra-secure permanent jobs with the rest on temporary contracts.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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