Global financial crisis and the UK national minimum wage – looking back to understand the present

Viv Mackay

Policy Studies, 2010, vol. 31, issue 5, 559-576

Abstract: This article compares the historical experience of the Wages Councils Act (WCA) with the National Minimum Wage Act (NMWA), looking at the continuities and the discontinuities. It identifies two discontinuities: past accumulation of detailed knowledge on an industry-by-industry basis and the past inclusive relationship with the trade unions. A long tradition of inadequate enforcement provides the main continuity. The article argues that although the NMWA is a more sophisticated piece of legislation than the WCA, this does not mean that there are no lessons to be learned from the past. In particular, the article suggests that the National Minimum Wage would benefit from more detailed statistical knowledge and better integration of trade union expertise. Moreover, past experience warns us that well-intentioned legislation can fall short when the political will to enforce it succumbs to wider economic pressures.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01442872.2010.495904 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cposxx:v:31:y:2010:i:5:p:559-576

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cpos20

DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2010.495904

Access Statistics for this article

Policy Studies is currently edited by Toby James

More articles in Policy Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().