Minimum Wage

Belman and Wolfson perform a meta-analysis on scores of published studies on the effects of the minimum wage to determine its impacts on employment, wages, poverty, and more.

During its run in the mid-'90s, Minimum Wage racked up critical accolades and a devoted following, numbering among its fans Patton Oswalt, Marc Maron, Dana Gould, Scott Aukerman, Margaret Cho, Janeane Garofalo, David Cross, and more. Why? Because each page boasted sticky, uncomfortable truths drenched in bleakly familiar humor. It was "cringe comedy" before the phrase had been coined, presaging squirmy shows like Louie and Girls. Set in a New York so real you can practically smell it (so claimed Mike Mignola), Minimum Wage is the workaday saga of cartoonist Rob Hoffman and his firebrand girlfriend, Sylvia. He churns out strips for smut rags and off-brand MAD knockoffs and she languishes managing a hair salon. With their colorful crew of friends, they forge ahead against the brutal indifference of their hometown. This definitive edition includes the original 72-page "pilot" episode (Minimum Wage Book One) and the revised "director's cut" of the main storyline. Plus, a bonus color section featuring original cover paintings and guest pin-ups by Mike Mignola, Kevin Nowlan, Dave Johnson, Jill Thompson, Dave Cooper, Glenn Barr, and others. Now featuring an introduction from Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman!

With growing concern about the conditions facing low wage workers and new challenges to traditional forms of labor market protection, this book offers a timely analysis of the purpose and effectiveness of minimum wages in different European countries. Building on original industry case studies, the analysis goes beyond general debates about the relative merits of labor market regulation to reveal important national differences in the functioning of minimum wage systems and their integration within national models of industrial relations. There is no universal position on minimum wage policy followed by governments and social partners. Nor is it true that trade unions consistently support minimum wages and employers oppose them. The evidence in this book shows that interests and objectives change over time and differ across industries and countries. Investigating the pay bargaining strategies of unions and employers in cleaning, security, retail, and construction, this book’s industry case studies show how minimum wage policy interacts with collective bargaining to produce different types of pay equity effects. The analysis provides new findings of ‘ripple effects’ shaped by trade union strategies and identifies key components of an ‘egalitarian pay bargaining approach’ in social dialogue. The lessons for policy are to embrace an inter-disciplinary approach to minimum wage analysis, to be mindful of the interconnections with the changing national systems of industrial relations, and to interrogate the pay equity effects.

A comprehensive review of evidence on the effect of minimum wages on employment, skills, wage and income distributions, and longer-term labor market outcomes concludes that the minimum wage is not a good policy tool.

This book goes beyond traditional minimum wage research to investigate the interplay between different country and sectoral institutional settings and actors’ strategies in the field of minimum wage policies. It asks which strategies and motives, namely free collective bargaining, fair pay and/or minimum income protection, are emphasised by social actors with respect to the regulation and adaptation of (statutory) minimum wages. Taking an actor-centered institutionalist approach, and employing cross-country comparative studies, sector studies and single country accounts of change, the book relates institutional and labour market settings, actors’ strategies and power resources with policy and practice outcomes. Looking at the key pay equity indicators of low wage development and women’s over-representation among the low paid, it illuminates our understandings about the importance of historical junctures, specific constellations of social actors, and sector- and country-specific actor strategies. Finally, it underlines the important role of social dialogue in shaping an effective minimum wage policy. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and policy-makers and practitioners in industrial relations, international human resource management, labour studies, labour market policy, inequality studies, trade union studies, European politics and political economy.

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Travel Writing. Victoria film maker and writer Andrew Struthers borrows the language and visual layout of the Victorian travelogue to tell his own tale in AROUND THE WORLD ON MINIMUM WAGE. While the stories Struthers regales the reader with are hilarious, there is a larger purpose at work, as the author explores the tensions between Eastern and Western philosophy, and how these differences work themselves out in the person of a Scottish-born, Uganda/Prince George-raised, now established in Victoria artist.

Increasing the minimum wage impacts not only the workers receiving the minimum wage. [...] The stagnation of the minimum wage over the past two decades is at least partially responsible for the plight of the working poor in Nova Scotia, many of whom earn somewhat more than the minimum wage. [...] Providing a real increase in the minimum wage would boost the wages of these and many more workers in need of a raise. [...] It addresses the economic impact of the minimum wage in the context of an economy that is producing too many low wage jobs, and considers some of the arguments against increasing the minimum wage. [...] The minimum wage sets a social standard or tone, and many public debates, as well as innumerable disputes inside the workplace, use the minimum wage as an implicit guide to construct arguments, to assess all wage scales, to measure the relative standards of one's enterprise.1 When the minimum wage is increased it creates an upward pressure on other wages.