Trade Union Cooperation in Europe by Bengt Furåker & Bengt Larsson

Author:Bengt Furåker & Bengt Larsson
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783030387709
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Arguments for Legislated Minimum Wages

Trade unions can have different motives for taking a certain position in the debate on statutory minimum wages. It is unclear to what extent empirical studies in the field have an impact on the debate. Unions’ motives may be more or less ideological or pragmatic and they can show more or less solidarity with various actors. In this and the next section we identify some of the most important arguments among trade unionists for and against minimum wage legislation. Indicators of these claims are also included in one of the empirical datasets (survey 2) that we use. We start with arguments about possible advantages.

Legislated minimum wages might secure that all workers—and not only the organized—are covered (Furåker and Lovén Seldén 2013; Schulten 2008; Schulten and Watt 2007). In one of our studies, a Spanish trade union official, interviewed in 2012, presented the argument in the following way (Furåker 2017):The strongest argument for minimum wages is that it is necessary to protect all workers by one instrument… But it is not necessary to have it by law; it could just as well be by collective bargaining. This is a difference of culture, because in some other countries it is a tradition to protect only affiliates—perhaps 10, 20, 30%—and not workers who are not members. We come from a tradition in which the unions fight for all. In Spain we have 19-20% union density and 80% are non-members.

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