Minimum wage regulation in Switzerland: survey evidence for restaurants in the canton of Neuchâtel

This paper provides a first set of results on the impact of minimum wage regulation in Switzerland. We study the effects of an unexpected Supreme Court ruling mandating the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel to enforce a minimum hourly wage of around CHF 20 previously accepted via popular ballot. Given policy discontinuity at cantonal borders, we design a two-wave survey of restaurants to measure wages, employment, workers’ characteristics, and prices and administer it in Neuchâtel as well as in geographically proximate districts of neighboring cantons. Our data covers pre- and post-enforcement outcomes for around 100 restaurants, with information for more than 800 employees distributed over two-survey waves. Our data suggest that the proportion of workers paid below minimum wage went down from 19% to 5% after the introduction of the policy. This decline is compensated by a significant increase of the workforce paid just above minimum wage, and our results suggest that restaurants did not use employment as a margin of adjustment. We also find evidence that the policy affected the distribution of hourly wages up to CHF 6 above the minimum wage, with some workers initially paid above minimum wage experiencing a wage increase.

Regolazione salariale e sistemi retributivi: il caso delle Utility in Italia

Great Recession has put pressure on wage regulation systems in Italian industries, creating a significant differentiation that leaded to a divergence in terms of wage dynamics, which contrasts with the common trend recorded in the previous decade. At the same time, with the new mechanism linked to the net HICP and introduced in 2009 to regulate contractual renewals, there has been a constant overestimation of future inflation. In assessing this evidence, should be considered not only the alleged escaped risks of a deflationary spiral, but also the actual risks that have arisen in terms of competitiveness deficits. In this paper, the authors explore wage regulation in a long-term perspective, analyzing trends over the past twenty years. Limits and potentials of national statistics are underlined, showing the advantages of further sectoral surveys. This is the case of the survey issued by Utilitalia (Industrial Association of Public Utilities), used here to analyze pay systems on three economic sectors of primary interest: Electricity, Gas-Water and Environmental Services. It is also an example of how detailed data can be used to create a management tool for companies.

The Statutory Minimum Wage

This chapter explores the modern minimum wage framework in detail. The first section begins by exploring the background to the National Minimum Wage Act through the lens of the relationship between minimum wages and wage supplementation. The second section then explores the conceptual structure of the Act in more detail. In particular, it explores how an individual’s minimum wage entitlement is assessed; the types of ‘work’ that are either implicitly or expressly, excluded from the Act; and the content of the concept of the ‘wage’. It concludes with some remarks about what the Act’s structure implies about the legal system’s understanding of the role of minimum ‘wage’ regulation today.

Wages, Salary, and Remuneration—Towards a Social Wage

This chapter traces the development of minimum wage legislation through the early to mid-twentieth century. It demonstrates the significance of the concept of ‘remuneration’ in shaping the legal environment in which workers’ right to payment was coming to be conceived. The first section begins with a discussion of this concept, tracing it from its origins in the concept of the salary. The second section builds on this analysis to explore the role of these concepts—the wage, the salary, and remuneration—in experiments in wage regulation. The third section explores the link between these different concepts and the emerging relational model of the contract of employment. The fourth section shows how these changes influenced the way in which minimum wage legislation came to be conceived in the mid-twentieth century, particularly in the context of the wages councils system of the 1940s. The fifth section then explores the broader implications of these changes, returning to the example of dock work and the various ‘decasualization’ policies of the era.

The Wage

The purpose of Part II of this book is to explore, at a more concrete level, the relationship between law and capitalist social relations, through a close genealogical study of the social category of the wage. This means tracing the evolution of this category through legal discourse, as capitalism developed in the United Kingdom. Chapter 4 will lay the groundwork for this analysis by specifying the methodological assumptions underpinning this genealogical analysis, while exploring, in more detail, how the contradictions inherent in capitalism manifest in the social category of the wage. The first section explains the nature, and importance, of ‘genealogy’. The second section explores two different conceptions of the wage in economic theory, with a view to teasing out the nature and significance of the wage as a social category and the contradictory functions it performs in capitalist society. The third section discusses the relevance of these ideas to our understanding of law’s role in relation to wage regulation, and employment status, by showing how approaches to these questions are influenced by legal actors’ beliefs about law’s ontology.

Part-time work in Danish private services: a (mis)match between wage flexibility and living hours

This chapter explores how the institutional framework for working time and wage regulation affects the prevalence of marginal part-time employment (less than 15 working hours per week) and its implications for men and women's hourly earnings within retail, industrial cleaning, hotels and restaurants. Analytically, we draw on the concept of living hours and find that the combined effects of wage and working time regulation influence the take-up of contracts of few hours and the workforce composition. We argue that the institutional framework of collective agreements, in some instances, facilitates a win-win situation for employers and employees alike and narrows the gender pay gap. In other instances, the very same agreements seemingly promote dualisation, especially for young people and migrants in terms of wage penalties and contracts of few hours, indicating the dual nature of the institutional framework.