Kurt Beck, chairman of the German Social Democrat Party, lef

GERMANY - JANUARY 14: Kurt Beck, chairman of the German Social Democrat Party, left, Andrea Ypsilanti, top candidate of the Social Democrat Party for the upcoming elections in the German state of Hesse, center, and Berthold Huber, chairman of the IG Metall German industrial union, arrive for an election rally in Frankfurt, Germany, on Monday, Jan. 14, 2008. Kurt Beck's Social Democrats, trailing Merkel's Christian Democrats by as many as 12 percentage points in national polls, have made minimum wages, including statutory base pay for lease workers, a central theme of their campaign for the Hesse state election on Jan. 27. (Photo by Hannelore Foerster/Bloomberg via Getty Images)