Low-Wage Work in the United Kingdom
Low-Wage Work in the United Kingdom

Author: Caroline LLoyd

Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation

Published: 2008-04-03

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780871545633

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The United Kingdom's labor market policies place it in a kind of institutional middle ground between the United States and continental Europe. Low pay grew sharply between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, in large part due to the decline of unions and collective bargaining and the removal of protections for the low paid. The changes instituted by Tony Blair's New Labour government since 1997, including the introduction of the National Minimum Wage, halted the growth in low pay but have not reversed it. Low-Wage Work in the United Kingdom explains why the current level of low-paying work remains one of the highest in Europe. The authors argue that the failure to deal with low pay reflects a policy approach which stressed reducing poverty, but also centers on the importance of moving people off benefits and into work, even at low wages. The U.K. government has introduced a version of the U.S. welfare to work policies and continues to stress the importance of a highly flexible and competitive labor market. A central policy theme has been that education and training can empower people to both enter work and to move into better paying jobs. The case study research reveals the endemic nature of low paid work and the difficulties workers face in escaping from the bottom end of the jobs ladder. However, compared to the United States, low paid workers in the United Kingdom do benefit from in-work social security benefits, targeted predominately at those with children, and entitlements to non-pay benefits such as annual leave, maternity and sick pay, and crucially, access to state-funded health care. Low-Wage Work in the United Kingdom skillfully illustrates the way that the interactions between government policies, labor market institutions, and the economy have ensured that low pay remains a persistent problem within the United Kingdom. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Case Studies of Job Quality in Advanced Economies

Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century
Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century

Author: Arthur L. Bowley

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-08-14

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 110741900X

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This book, which was first published in 1900, provides a statistically based examination of British wages during the nineteenth century. The text constitutes an attempt 'to illustrate the various questions that arise in the study of wages, choosing those groups which afford problems of any special difficulty or interest'.

Minimum Wage Policy in Great Britain and the United States
Minimum Wage Policy in Great Britain and the United States

Author: Jerold L. Waltman

Publisher: Algora Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0875866018

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Analyzing wage policies and the political ideas that underlie them, including the irony of an Iraq funding bill leading to a minimum wage increase, this book compares not only Federal but State minimum wage policies and those of Britain as well. Going beyond the debate on public expenditure programs, the author examines the future of the "welfare state"? not from a perspective of entitlement but of citizenship in a public polity.

Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain
Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain

Author: Joyce Burnette

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2008-04-17

Total Pages: 16

ISBN-13: 1139470582

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A major study of the role of women in the labour market of Industrial Revolution Britain. It is well known that men and women usually worked in different occupations, and that women earned lower wages than men. These differences are usually attributed to custom but Joyce Burnette here demonstrates instead that gender differences in occupations and wages were instead largely driven by market forces. Her findings reveal that rather than harming women competition actually helped them by eroding the power that male workers needed to restrict female employment and minimising the gender wage gap by sorting women into the least strength-intensive occupations. Where the strength requirements of an occupation made women less productive than men, occupational segregation maximised both economic efficiency and female incomes. She shows that women's wages were then market wages rather than customary and the gender wage gap resulted from actual differences in productivity.