Minimum wage Wikipedia. A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their workers. Equivalently, it is the price floor below which workers may not sell their labor. Money-Receipt-Template-Doc-Free-Download.gif' alt='Free Wage Slip Download Uk Truck' title='Free Wage Slip Download Uk Truck' />Although minimum wage laws are in effect in many jurisdictions, differences of opinion exist about the benefits and drawbacks of a minimum wage. Supporters of the minimum wage say it increases the standard of living of workers, reduces poverty, reduces inequality, and boosts morale. In contrast, opponents of the minimum wage say it increases poverty, increases unemployment particularly among unskilled or inexperienced workers and is damaging to businesses, because excessively high minimum wages require businesses to raise the prices of their product or service to accommodate the extra expense of paying a higher wage. Modern national laws enforcing compulsory union membership which proscribed minimum wages for their members were first passed in New Zealand and Australia in the 1. The movement for minimum wages was first motivated as a way to stop the exploitation of workers in sweatshops, by employers who were thought to have unfair bargaining power over them. Over time, minimum wages came to be seen as a way to help lower income families. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 2. HistoryeditIt is a serious national evil that any class of His Majestys subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions. It was formerly supposed that the working of the laws of supply and demand would naturally regulate or eliminate that evil. In public policy, a living wage is the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their basic needs. This is not necessarily the same as subsistence, which refers. It was a story that was too good to pass up. The Svalbard doomsday seed vault had flooded because of global warminginduced high temperatures melting the. Download the free trial version below to get started. Doubleclick the downloaded file to install the software. Vena Ltd are the exclusive UK agent for OKALUX GmbH, who provide a wide range of innovative functional glazing solutions that incorporate different materials such as. Join the NASDAQ Community today and get free, instant access to portfolios, stock ratings, realtime alerts, and more Join Today. Where. you have a powerful organisation on both sides. But where you have what we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer is undercut by the worst. Algorithmic Trading Software Open Source more. Winston Churchill. MP, Trade Boards Bill, Hansard. House of Commons 2. April 1. 90. 9 vol 4, col 3. Modern minimum wage laws trace their origin to the Ordinance of Labourers 1. King Edward III that set a maximum wage for laborers in medieval England. King Edward III, who was a wealthy landowner, was dependent, like his lords, on serfs to work the land. In the autumn of 1. Black Plague reached England and decimated the population. The severe shortage of labor caused wages to soar and encouraged King Edward III to set a wage ceiling. Subsequent amendments to the ordinance, such as the Statute of Labourers 1. While the laws governing wages initially set a ceiling on compensation, they were eventually used to set a living wage. An amendment to the Statute of Labourers in 1. As time passed, the Justice of the Peace, who was charged with setting the maximum wage, also began to set formal minimum wages. The practice was eventually formalized with the passage of the Act Fixing a Minimum Wage in 1. King James I for workers in the textile industry. By the early 1. Statutes of Labourers was repealed as increasingly capitalistic England embraced laissez faire policies which disfavored regulations of wages whether upper or lower limits. The subsequent 1. As trade unions were decriminalized during the century, attempts to control wages through collective agreement were made. However, this meant that a uniform minimum wage was not possible. In Principles of Political Economy in 1. John Stuart Mill argued that because of the collective action problems that workers faced in organisation, it was a justified departure from laissez faire policies or freedom of contract to regulate peoples wages and hours by law. It was not until the 1. New Zealand and Australia. The movement for a minimum wage was initially focused on stopping sweatshop labor and controlling the proliferation of sweatshops in manufacturing industries. The sweatshops employed large numbers of women and young workers, paying them what were considered to be substandard wages. The sweatshop owners were thought to have unfair bargaining power over their employees, and a minimum wage was proposed as a means to make them pay fairly. Over time, the focus changed to helping people, especially families, become more self sufficient. Minimum wage lawseditThe first modern national minimum wages were enacted by the government recognition of unions which in turn established minimum wage policy among their members, as in New Zealand in 1. Australia in 1. 89. United Kingdom in 1. In the United States, statutory minimum wages were first introduced nationally in 1. United Kingdom in 1. There is now legislation or binding collective bargaining regarding minimum wage in more than 9. In the European Union, 2. Other countries, such as Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy, have no minimum wage laws, but rely on employer groups and trade unions to set minimum earnings through collective bargaining. Minimum wage rates vary greatly across many different jurisdictions, not only in setting a particular amount of moneyfor example 7. US state laws or 2. US state of Washington,1. United Kingdom2. Russia and China set monthly minimum wages or the scope of coverage. Currently the American federal minimum wage rests at seven dollars, twenty five cents 7. However, some states do not recognize the minimum wage law such as Louisiana and Tennessee. Other states operate below the federal minimum wage such as Georgia and Wyoming. Some jurisdictions even allow employers to count tips given to their workers as credit towards the minimum wage levels. India was one of the first developing countries to introduce minimum wage policy. It also has one of the most complicated systems with more than 1,2. Informal minimum wageseditCustoms and extra legal pressures from governments or labor unions can produce a de facto minimum wage. So can international public opinion, by pressuring multinational companies to pay Third World workers wages usually found in more industrialized countries. The latter situation in Southeast Asia and Latin America was publicized in the 2. West Africa in the middle of the twentieth century. Setting minimum wageeditAmong the indicators that might be used to establish an initial minimum wage rate are ones that minimize the loss of jobs while preserving international competitiveness. Among these are general economic conditions as measured by real and nominal gross domestic product inflation labor supply and demand wage levels, distribution and differentials employment terms productivity growth labor costs business operating costs the number and trend of bankruptcies economic freedom rankings standards of living and the prevailing average wage rate. In the business sector, concerns include the expected increased cost of doing business, threats to profitability, rising levels of unemployment and subsequent higher government expenditure on welfare benefits raising tax rates, and the possible knock on effects to the wages of more experienced workers who might already be earning the new statutory minimum wage, or slightly more. Among workers and their representatives, political consideration weigh in as labor leaders seek to win support by demanding the highest possible rate. Other concerns include purchasing power, inflation indexing and standardized working hours. In the United States, the minimum wage promulgated by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the minimum wage in the United States would have been 1.