History of the minimum wage

The history of minimum wage is about the attempts and measures governments have made to introduce a standard amount of periodic pay below which employers could not compensate their workers.

New Zealand

New Zealand enacted the first national minimum wage laws in 1894 by the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, which, unlike the wages board of Victoria, established arbitration boards to enforce compulsory arbitration.[1]

Australia

In 1896, Victoria, Australia, amended the Factories Act to create a wages board.[1] The wages board did not set a universal minimum wage; rather it set basic wages for six industries that were considered to pay low wages.[2] First enacted as a four-year experiment, the wages board was renewed in 1900 and made permanent in 1904; by that time it covered 150 different industries.[3]

By 1902, other Australian states, such as New South Wales and Western Australia, had also formed wages boards.[1]

In 1907, the Harvester decision was handed down in Australia. It established a 'living wage' for a man, his wife, and two children to "live in frugal comfort".

On 14 December 2005, the Australian Fair Pay Commission was established under the Workplace Relations Amendment (WorkChoices) Act 2005. The responsibility of the commission includes the setting of the standard federal minimum wage,[4] replacing the role of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission that took submissions from a variety of sources to determine appropriate minimum wages.

The Australian Fair Pay Commission was replaced by Fair Work Australia in 2010.[5]

United Kingdom

In 1907, Ernest Aves was sent by the British Secretary of State for the Home Department to investigate the results of the minimum wage laws in Australia and New Zealand. In part as a result of his report, Winston Churchill, then president of the Board of Trade, introduced the Trade Boards Act on March 24, 1909. It became law in October of that year, and went into effect in January 1910. It established four trade boards.

The first moves to legislate wages did not set minimum wages; rather, the laws created arbitration boards and councils to resolve labour conflicts before the recourse to strikes. There used to be more heavy reliance on collective bargaining, with specific sectors.

United States

In 1912, the state of Massachusetts, United States, set minimum wages for women and children, and some states enacted similar protective laws.[6] Under the Massachusetts laws, there was "the power only to investigate conditions and recommend changes".[7]

“ No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. ”
— President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act.[8]

In the United States, statutory minimum wages were first introduced nationally in 1938 by president Franklin D. Roosevelt.[9][10]

In addition to the federal minimum wage, nearly all states within the United States have their own minimum wage laws with the exception of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee.[11] Sixteen states have a minimum wage that is higher than the federal minimum wage.[12]

In the 1960s, minimum wage laws were introduced into Latin America as part of the Alliance for Progress; however these minimum wages were, and are, low.[13]

European Union developments

In the European Union, 18 member states currently have national minimum wages.[14] Many countries, such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Cyprus have no minimum wage laws, but rely on employer groups and trade unions to set minimum earnings through collective bargaining.[15]

In July 2014 Germany began [16] legislating to introduce a federally mandated minimum wage law, the Gesetz zur Regelung eines allgemeinen Mindestlohns (Mindestlohngesetz - MiLoG) (unofficial translation: "Act Regulating a General Minimum Wage (Minimum Wage Act)"),[17] which came into effect on 1 January 2015.[18] The minimum wage is set at €8.50 per hour. A French law passed in the National Assembly on 17 February 2015 and effective from the end of 2015 imposed statutory minimum wage regulations on foreign truck drivers plying international routes to and from France and undertaking cabotage in the country.[19]

The European Commission introduced an infringement procedure against France and Germany on 19 May 2015, arguing that the application of these laws in the transport sector had a disproportionately restrictive impact on the freedom to provide services and the free movement of goods, two of the principal freedoms on which the European Union is based.[20] On 16 June 2016 the Commission sent a letter of formal notice to the French authorities on this subject and issued a supplementary letter to the German authorities, initiating two months' notice of potential legal action.[21]

Switzerland

In May 2014, Switzerland overwhelmingly defeated in a referendum a proposal to set the minimum wage at 22 Swiss francs ($25), which would have made it the world's highest minimum wage.[22]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Charles Henry Verrill, Charles Henry Verrill (1915). Minimum-wage Legislation in the United States and Foreign Countries Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics: Miscellaneous series. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 105.
  2. ↑ Starr, Gerald (1993). Minimum wage fixing : an international review of practices and problems (PDF) (2nd impression (with corrections) ed.). Geneva: International Labour Office. p. 1. ISBN 9789221025115.
  3. ↑ Waltman, Jerold. "The Politics of the Minimum Wage." University of Illinois Press. 2000
  4. ↑ "fairpay.gov.au - About the Commission". Australian Fair Pay Commission. Retrieved 2007-07-05.
  5. ↑ "Australian Labor Party : Federal Labor's New Independent Industrial Umpire: Fair Work Australia". Australian Labor Party. Archived from the original on April 1, 2008. Retrieved 2008-07-12.
  6. ↑ Folbre, Nancy, Greed, Lust and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009 (ISBN 978-0-19-923842-2)), p. 276 & n. 37 (author prof. economics, Univ. of Mass. Amherst).
  7. ↑ "Both sides a debate: Minimum wage legislation". The Independent. Dec 14, 1914. Retrieved July 24, 2012.
  8. ↑ Tritch, Teresa (March 7, 2014). "F.D.R. Makes the Case for the Minimum Wage". New York Times. Retrieved March 7, 2014.
  9. ↑ Sanjiv Sachdev (2003). "Raising the rate: An evaluation of the uprating mechanism for the minimum wage". Employee Relations.
  10. ↑ "History of the National Minimum Wage". Employment Matters. United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry. 17 June 2006. Retrieved 2006-06-22. Note: Date enacted was 1 April 1999
  11. ↑ DOL WHD: Minimum Wage Laws in the States
  12. ↑ Minimum Wage Rates in the United States
  13. ↑ Bethell, Leslie (June 29, 1990). The Cambridge History of Latin America. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-24518-4. p. 342.
  14. ↑ Eurostat (2006): Minimum Wages 2006 - Variations from 82 to 1503 euro gross per month(PDF)
  15. ↑ Ehrenberg, Ronald G. Labor Markets and Integrating National Economies, Brookings Institution Press (1994), p. 41
  16. ↑ "Minimum Wage Act in Germany with effect from 01-01-2015". Dr. Mayer & Kügler Rechtsanwälte PartG mbB - Arbeitsrecht. Lawyer Michael Kügler. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  17. ↑ Provided by Ute Reusch, juris GmbH Saarbrücken
  18. ↑ "Germany may become 22nd EU state with federal minimum wage". Germany News.Net. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
  19. ↑ Lloyds Loading List, France imposes minimum wage on foreign truck drivers, published 18 February 2015, accessed 6 August 2016
  20. ↑ European Commission, Transport: Commission launches infringement case on the application of the German Minimum Wage law to the transport sector, published 19 May 2015, accessed 11 February 2016
  21. ↑ European Commission, Press Release: Transport: Commission takes legal action against the systematic application of the French and German minimum wage legislation to the transport sector, accessed 6 August 2016
  22. ↑ "Swiss voters reject world's highest minimum wage proposal". Switzerland News.Net. Retrieved May 21, 2014.

External links

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