Minimum Wage

Research, analysis and opinion tendered for RespectAbility, a disability rights advocacy organization, on the subject of paying subminimum wages for disabled persons, a practice that the Biden administration, with input from organizations like ours, is on the verge of eliminating.

The statutory minimum wage (SMW) law was enforced in Hong Kong on 1 May 2011. To examine its impact, this longitudinal study measured the quality of life, job and pay satisfaction , monthly income, hourly rate and working hours of vulnerable groups (n = 253) before and after the legislation. The findings confirmed that the enforcement of the SMW induced a positive impact as intended. The introduction of the SMW induced a positive wage and employment effect on the vulnerable groups in Hong Kong without harming their employment rate. Job and pay satisfaction, as well as most domains of the quality of life (i.e., physical and psychological health, and environment), increased significantly. In general, the positive impact of the SMW was more prominent for employees who previously worked less than 18 hours a week and who had hourly rates less than 28 HKD. The implications of the findings are discussed in the social context of Hong Kong. Key Practitioner Message: • Enforcing minimum wage induced a positive impact on quality of life, job and pay satisfaction, and a monthly income of vulnerable groups. • The social relations (quality of life) decreased after implementing minimum wage for workers working longer than 18 hours a week. • Longer working hours is a key factor for the increase of a monthly income among the vulnerable groups.

Probably the first paper I wrote as a college student back in 2006, this is what I wrote for my class "Writing the Essay." It's a class that all NYU undergraduate students (except for NYU Gallatin students) are required to take. For my first paper, I wrote about childhood and related it to Jane Addam's Hull House.

This paper presents a study on family impact analysis of the
Statutory Minimum Wage (SMW) in Hong Kong. Qualitative data
were collected from seven focus groups and 13 individual
interviews conducted with low-wage employees, parents of
teenage workers, and parents of employees with disabilities. The
3D7L model of influence was adopted as the conceptual
framework. The study found that SMW provided the participating
employees with a wage floor and obviously raised their income. It
facilitates family budgeting and motivates the participating
employees to provide better care to their families. However, the
rapid inflation eroded their increased income. They continue to
work long hours to earn a living. In interaction with the gender
norm, SMW boosted part-time work opportunities for women but the persistent gender norm limited their choices of work location and salary level. The implementation of SMW also escalated the social expectation on productivity that in turn intensified the marginalization of most vulnerable employees. For employees
receiving public welfare allowances, the inflexible welfare policy
has ‘rub off effect’ on their financial gain from SMW. In sum, SMW
is not able to provide the adequate support and opportunities for
the employees to actualize their motivations in giving better care
to their families. Thus, the policy of SMW needs to be supported
by other relevant social policies and services designed to address
inflation pressures, minimize family-work conflicts, and mitigate
the negative employment effects on the most vulnerable groups
of employees.

Even though several papers about the impacts of minimum wage increases on employment have been published in the last decades, the debate is still ongoing among economists, policymakers, and the general public. Many recent papers have focused on the potential disemployment effects of the minimum wage regarding teenagers and restaurant workers since both groups present high rates of current minimum wage employment and job offerings. In this paper, I use Monte Carlo simulations with a broad set of data-generating processes and estimation strategies to assess the validity of various methodological strategies and assumptions often encountered in the corresponding literature. Simulation results show that the distributed lag specification with unit-specific time trends and leaded values of the minimum wage, in first-differences, produced less biased estimates for most of the generating processes. This preferred specification is then used to estimate the impacts of minimum wage amendments on youth employment in Canadian provinces between 1990 and 2018. Estimation results demonstrate that the long-run impacts of minimum wage hikes on employment in Canada are likely to be small and statistically insignificant, even for low-skilled young workers. Moreover, my results demonstrate that the standard fixed effects estimator generally used in former studies is likely to identify spurious relationships between minimum wage and employment levels. Results from the preferred specification are robust to both potential reverse causality biases and yearly "strong" real increases in minimum wage levels.

1. Our recommendations help –

A. Entrepreneurs to downsize, right size or close their enterprise without government permission.
B. But, all workers who have been laid off must get PF and Severance Pay (as in Europe and Brazil)

2. Therefore we are AGAINST THRESHOLDS. Entrepreneurs and Workers suffer because of TWO THRESHOLDS.
A. SIZE: Units with 100+ workers suffer many restraints to Labour flexibility. This is disagreeable to Entrepreneurs.
B. DURATION: Only workers who have been employed for over 240 days are entitled to benefits. This seriously disadvantages workers.

We are against all thresholds as they:
i. Encourage small enterprises and not big scale, high technology ones
ii. Encourage employment of non-permanent casual workers; this blocks skill development

3. ALL WORKERS ARE ON THE MUSTER and are entitled to all benefits.

4. When worker is retrenched/laid-off, the benefits over and above PF, Bonus also includes SEVERANCE PAY (as in Europe and Brazil). We have allowed for exceptions in “Seasonal Industries”, but there are certain constraints in this sector too.

5. So now no enterprise gains from being
A. Small and Employing below 100 workers
OR
B. Firing workers before 240 days of Employment are over

6. So hiring contract /casual workers now become less attractive.
     
THEREFORE:
A. All workers hired for non-core jobs must come from a contractor’s firm where this job is a core one
B. All contract workers, no matter where they are currently hired to work, are on the Muster of their parent firm

7. On Dispute Resolution we suggest:
A. One Workers’ Council whose office bearers are elected by universal secret ballot BUT only by those inside the company.
B. Trade Unions can function within but the body representing workers will be the Workers’ Council.

8. Also a Three Tier Dispute Resolution Mechanism is suggested.
A. Workers’ Council, whose office bearers will be internal and elected internally as well.
B. Conciliation Committee, which will have labour representatives.
C. Labour Tribunal.

The time taken at each level is fixed without exceptions.

Austerity places intense pressures on labour costs in paid care. In the UK, electronic monitoring technology has been introduced to record (and materially reduce) the working time and wages of homecare workers. Based on empirical findings, we show that, in a 'time of austerity', care is reductively constructed as a consumption of time. Service users are constructed as needy, greedy, time-consumers and homecare workers as resource-wasting time-takers. We point to austerity as a temporal ideology aimed at persuading populations that individual deprivation in the present moment, self-sacrifice and the suppression of personal need in the here and now is a necessary requirement to underpin a more secure national future. Accordingly, women in low-waged care work are required to eschew a rights-bearing, present-tense identity and are assumed willing to suppress their entitlements to lawful wages as a sacrifice to the future. By transforming our understandings of 'care' into those of 'time consumption', and by emphasizing the virtue of present-tense deprivation, a politics of austerity appears to justify time-monitoring in care provision and the rationing of homecare workers' pay.

This paper evaluates the contribution of cash transfer programmes to the observed fall in inequality in Brazil between 1995 and 2004 as well as its impact on poverty. We use the 2004 Brazilian National Household Survey (PNAD) that for the first time collected data on the incidence of some of the cash transfer programmes. We develop a methodology to separate

Purpose: The National Minimum Wage Policy is introduced at Malaysia since 2010 to protect the welfare of low-income working group at Malaysia. The implementation of National Minimum Wage Policy creates a number of impacts to many of the manufacturers in Malaysia. The research aims to identify the implications of the National Minimum Wage Policy on the Electrical and Electronics (E&E) industry in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach: The research applies the data collection method, semi-structured interviews in collecting data to study the implications of National Minimum Wage Policy on the Electrical and Electronics (E&E) Industry in Malaysia. In addition, the research applies the research strategy (multiple case studies) and performs cross-case analysis to indicate the different implications of National Minimum Wage Policy among the different manufacturers in the E&E industry in Malaysia. Findings: The Electrical and Electronics (E&E) companies are affected in the different perspectives: increased in labour costs, decreased in profits, lower competitiveness in locally and globally, changes in the current business operation of the firms, shortage of local workers and increased labour turnover. Research limitations/implications: The research is only conducted within the Electrical and Electronics industry in Malaysia. Practical implications: This research can be served as a guideline for the manufacturers in the E&E industry in Malaysia to accommodate their implementations of the National Minimum Wage Policy accordingly. Originality/value: The research is original and has not been done by other researchers.

Wyrok TS z 15.07.2021 r. w sprawach połączonych C-152/20 i C-218/20, DG i EH przeciwko SC Gruber Logistics SRL i Sindicatul Lucrătorilor din Transporturi przeciwko SC Samidani Trans SRL, stanowi jedno z kluczowych rozstrzygnięć Trybunału Sprawiedliwości z dziedziny międzynarodowego prawa pracy. Dotyczy on dwóch zagadnień związanych z ochroną pracownika jako strony słabszej w ramach transgranicznego, indywidualnego stosunku pracy: podstawy prawnej stosowania stawek płacy minimalnej obowiązujących w systemie prawnym państwa, w którym zazwyczaj jest wykonywana praca (lex loci laboris) oraz problematyki wyboru prawa właściwego dla umowy o pracę. Trybunał wyjaśnił, w jaki sposób należy stosować prawo wybrane jako statut stosunku pracy na podstawie art. 8 ust. 1 rozporządzenia nr 593/2008, mając na uwadze zastrzeżenie na korzyść pracownika skuteczności przepisów bezwzględnie obowiązujących prawa, które byłoby właściwe w braku wyboru. Na uwagę zasługuje wyraźne przesądzenie w omawianym wyroku, że prawo wybrane przez strony nie jest stosowane do indywidualnego stosunku pracy jedynie w takim zakresie, w jakim oferuje ono pracownikowi niższy standard ochrony niż prawo właściwe na podstawie odpowiedniego łącznika obiektywnego. Tym samym porównanie owego standardu następuje in concreto, a nie in abstracto, również gdy chodzi o przepisy o płacy minimalnej, które według prawa państw członkowskich UE zwykle mają charakter jednostronnie bezwzględnie obowiązujący. W dalszej części orzeczenia dokonano analizy, w jaki sposób oceniać standardowe klauzule sugerujące wybór prawa, na których sformułowanie pracownik nie miał wpływu. Trybunał Sprawiedliwości podkreślił prymat zasady autonomii woli stron umowy o pracę na gruncie art. 8 rozporządzenia nr 593/2008, która ani nie podlega a priori ograniczeniu za pośrednictwem normatywnych wzorców kontraktowych w krajowych przepisach prawa pracy, ani nie zostaje przekreślona przez to, że pracownik-choćby nawet implicite-akceptuje przedłożony mu wzorzec umowny. Wyrok nie może jednak być rozumiany jako nakazujący odstępstwo od zasady, iż wola stron odnośnie do wyboru prawa, również w przypadku tzw. wyboru dorozumianego, powinna zawsze być wolą rzeczywistą. Rzeczą sądów krajowych pozostaje zatem zbadanie na podstawie zgromadzonego materiału, czy strony osiągnęły w tym zakresie konsens.
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The judgment of the CJ of 15 July 2021 in joined cases C-152/20 and C-218/20, DG and EH v. SC Gruber Logistics SRL and Sindicatul Lucrătorilor din Transporturi v. SC Samidani Trans SRL, is one of the key decisions of the Court Justice in the field of international labour law. It deals with two issues related to the protection of an employee as the weaker party in a cross-border individual employment relationship: the legal basis for the application of the minimum wage as in force in the legal system of the country in which the work is habitually performed (lex loci laboris), as well as the issue of the parties’ choice of law applicable to the individual employment contract. The Court explained how to apply the law chosen as applicable to the individual employment contract pursuant to Article 8(1) of the Rome I Regulation, bearing in mind the reservation, in favour of the employee, of the effectiveness of the universally applicable provisions of law which would be the governing law in the absence of a choice. It is worth noting that the law chosen by the parties is not applied to the individual employment contract only to the extent that it offers the employee a lower standard of protection than the law applicable on the basis of an appropriate objective connecting factor. Hence, the comparison as regards this standard takes place in concreto, and not in abstracto, also when it comes to the provisions on the minimum wage, which, according to the law of the EU Member States, usually have a unilaterally binding character. The judgment goes on to analyse how to assess standard clauses suggesting the choice of law by the parties, the wording of which was beyond the employee’s control. The Court of Justice emphasized the primacy of the principle of autonomy of will of the parties to an employment contract under Article 8 of the Rome I Regulation, which is neither a priori limited by normative standard contract forms in accordance with the national labour law, nor invalidated by the fact that the employee – even implicitly – accepts such a standard contract submitted to him/her. However, the judgment cannot be understood as ordering a derogation from the principle that the will of the parties to choose the law applicable has to be real, also as regards the implied choice. It is therefore for the domestic courts to verify, on the basis of the evidence collected, whether the parties have reached a meeting of minds in this respect.

This research analyses the policy background, agenda setting and formulation of the rationality of the setting minimum wage in the UK. The challenges faced in the implementation stage are provided together with the explanations of its reasons. Lastly the outputs of the policy will be estimated and lessons to be learned from this case will be discussed.

Ücretlerin en alt sınırı olan asgari ücret, çalışanların yoksulluktan kurtulabilmesi, onurlu bir birey olabilmesi ve kimseye muhtaç olmaması gibi sosyo-ekonomik nedenlerden dolayı günümüzde önemi daha da artan bir sosyal ücrettir. İnsanın bu hayatta tatmin olabilmesi, ailesi, kendisi ve topluma karşı sorumluluklarını yerine getirebilmesi için yeterli ücreti alması gerekmektedir. Dünyada çok farklı uygulama alanları bulmuş olan asgari ücretin, ülkemizde de farklı uygulama şekilleri tezahür etmiş ve mevcut yapıda tek bir asgari ücret belirleme usulüne geçilmiştir.
Bu temel çerçevesinde tezimizde, Türkiye’deki asgari ücretin dünyadaki asgari ücret uygulamaları açısından değerlendirilmesi yapılmaya çalışılmıştır. İlk bölümde genel hatlarıyla asgari ücret düşüncesi ve uygulaması, farklı düşünce sistemlerinin asgari ücret yaklaşımları, asgari ücretin önemi ve amaçları ele alınmıştır. İkinci bölümde asgari ücretin tespiti ve kriterlerine, asgari ücretin uygulanma çeşitlerine, uluslararası kurumların asgari ücret yaklaşımlarına yer verilmiştir. Üçüncü bölümde ise Türkiye’deki asgari ücret uygulaması, tespit kriterleri ve organları ele alınmış olup, uluslararası kriterlerle ve uygulamalarla uygunsuz alanlar ortaya konmuştur ve tartışılmıştır.
Nihayetinde tezimiz, asgari ücretin sosyal kriterlerine ekonomik kriterlerinden daha ziyade önem verilmesi ve asgari ücretin sosyal bir ücret olduğunun göz ardı edilmemesi üzerine yoğunlaşmıştır. Asgari ücretle çalışanların genellikle toplumun en yoksul kesimi olduğu bilinmeli ve hayat pahalılığı içinde ihtiyaçlarını karşılayabilecekleri bir ücret seviyesi belirlenmelidir. Bütün bunlara dikkat ederken, ekonomiyi de işlemez hale getirmemeye, verilecek ücretlerinde bu anlamda gerçeklere uymasına dikkat edilmelidir. Ödenemeyecek bir ücretin işvereni ve ekonomiyi, dahası çalışanı sıkıntıya sokacağı da bilinmelidir. Öte yandan, asgari ücretle çalışanların sıkıntılarının çözümünde asgari ücret uygulaması yeterli görülmemeli, aile yardımı ve benzeri diğer yardımlarla desteklenmelidir. Asgari ücretin belirlenmesinde ILO ve diğer uluslararası kurumların ve Türkiye’deki sosyal paydaşların standartları ve fikirleri alınmalı ve uygulanmalıdır.