There are, however, many situations where collective bargaining cannot be applied. This is, for example, the case when the place of employment is small or the workforce is widely dispersed. This happens in retailing, restaurants, agriculture, and many small businesses.
In these cases there has been too prevalent a tendency for business to offer the minimum wage as if it was the de facto basis for employment, whatever the skills a person has to offer and whatever their worth to the enterprise. That is wrong, and was recognised to be wrong in the past when industrial wages boards set minimum pay levels for particular skills in specified sectors to ensure that people would not exploited whatever their particular employment circumstance.
The restoration of these boards with the task of setting minimum standards for pay and conditions of employment seems a basic necessity to ensure that all employees are properly rewarded without the difficulty and embarrassment of complicated negotiation having to take place in situations which inevitably favour the employer.
Guess who would be Sir Topham Hatt in this world?
We already have a solution to this point. It’s called the labour market.
” That is wrong, and was recognised to be wrong in the past when industrial wages boards…” were abolished.
He’s a creature of the unions so this demand is not really surprising as they loved the bodies in question…
If you had taken up the challenge of reading the book Tim you could have critiqued it at the time.
He does seem to have a bizarre attachment to the 1970s (Indeed you could say the entire period between 1945 and 1979) bordering on the fetishistic. Perhaps that was the last time he had anything approaching a good time?
His attachment to the period between 1945 and 1970 would seem to be because that was the period when the way forward was seen as imitating “the future”, i.e. the Soviet Union.
Never mind that the USSR was saved by England (and her colonies) and the US in WW2, then supported again and again (see grain shipments).
It didn’t hurt that the Soviet method involved lots of licensing and bureaus, so he could get into one of those and become the nomenklatura.
…and then it came crashing down and he hasn’t been the same since.
The various Wages Boards were, in theory, rendered redundant by Tony Blair’s “National Minimum Wage” although that ignored the shorter working life that *should* apply to those engaged in heavy manual labour or jobs requiring youthful physiques compared to the typing pool or bureaucrats.
Secondly anyone with skills deserving a premium over the NMW can ask for a higher wage and get it because (except in an area with high unemployment or no alternative employer) the business will be worse off if it refuses.
Odf course Murphy, whom I remember saying “we must rescue the Party from the Blairites” may claim that it’s all the fault of Tony Blair for his left-wing action while he habitually condemns for being – allegedly – right-wing
Imagine if people’s salaries depended on him being able to reach an agreement with other people. That whould cut wage inflation.
About 5% of UK jobs are at NMW, and many of those are entry level jobs not jobs for life.
Nice to see him focus on the big issues of the day.
And around 9% (in 2017) were clustered within 2~3% of the NMW. Signs of the distribution becoming bi-modal?
Who knows, but the ONS apparently did not expect to see the clustering…
The problem of capture by low agricultural wages was solved by the invention of the bicycle, and extinguished by the invention of the car.
“That is wrong, and was recognised to be wrong in the past…”
But then some twat came along and decided to set a minimum wage by statute. If the NMW isn’t to be considered “the minimum basis for employment” (which, I agree, is scandalous; if my only tool of competition is price, I should be allowed to use it), then what the hell is it?