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Studies of the employment effects of minimum wage laws have generally been interpreted as showing no relationship between the increases in wages and subsequent changes in employment of the groups affected. Using the data from three leading studies often cited in support of this conclusion, the author of this article argues that the employment effects have not only been significantly related to the minimum wage orders but also that they have been consistent with the assumption of a negatively inclined demand curve for labor. He concludes from his re-examination of the data that, with reference to wage-employment problems, orthodox wage theory deserves more respect than it has been granted by many economists and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inherent in the ideal of the union as a voluntary organization whose sole function is promotion of the welfare of its worker-members is the concept that its government and operations should be democratic. Much of the criticism of unions involves allegations about their lack of democracy. In the United States, matters of internal government have largely been left to the conscience and control of the unions themselves. In Australia, in contrast, the government, through the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, has attempted to insure democratic union behavior through direct and rather detailed regulation. This article reviews the Australian experience, especially in reference to union elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Equally as old as the study of economics is the question, Can economists supply definite and useful answers to the practical problems confronting administrators? In a discussion of the variety and complexity of issues arising in the seemingly simple matter of setting a minimum wage for a small processing industry, Professor Rottenberg indicates the usefulness and limitations of economic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the labour movement in New York, supporting the minimum-wage legislation, during the years 1933 to 1937. Minimum-wage legislation failed to gain widespread acceptance until the New Deal in the U.S. When the depression hit, workers had little or no protection against the vicious wage cutting which swept the country. New York not only became the first state to adopt a wage law during this period, but it also initiated a test of the measure's constitutionality. For decades the National Consumers' League (NCL) led the campaign for minimum wages throughout the country. In 1923, a ruling by the Supreme Court halted the initial campaign for this reform. NCL efforts in the preceding decade had brought passage of minimum-wage laws in fifteen states and the District of Columbia. The depression revived interest in minimum wages, since massive unemployment gave businessmen the opportunity to exploit helpless workers by drastically reducing wages. Although the cost of living fell

Discusses issues concerning the minimum wage laws in the U.S. Need to educate the public about the law of demand relating to labour; Information on the theory of economist Frank G. Steindl; Discussion of the Downsian economics of politics.

The article focuses on the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the child-labor legislation in the U.S. One of the lesser-known legislative activities of AFL during the first quarter of the century was its involvement in what amounted to a nation-wide campaign for child-labor legislation. While AFL was quite active legislatively throughout the first half-century or so of its existence, child-labor legislation represents a significant episode for several reasons. First, AFL either decided or was forced to shift its tactics and thinking several times. Second, quite in contrast with most of its legislative efforts, the Federation accomplished absolutely nothing in this case. Finally, in pursuing its child-labor goals, AFL got involved in a cooperative effort with a variety of non-labor groups who were also attempting to effect legislative change in the area. The paper describes the Federation's attempts to obtain some type of federal or state statutes limiting hours of work as well as measures limiting the employment of and providing minimum wages for children.

The article discusses on several recent court cases. Constitutionality of New York minimum wage law for women. According to the New York Minimum Wage Law it is defined an unreasonable and oppressive wage as one which is less than either the fair value of the employee's services or the cost of living, and declares that the payment of such a wage is against public policy. It further provides that, if such an oppressive wage is found to exist in a given industry, the wage board shall set a minimum fair wage rate.

The article focuses on the legislation related to the judiciality of minimum wage. Minimum wage legislation has been of two main kinds. One is the Massachusetts variety which vests a commission with power to make inquiries and publish results. Employers are exposed to public knowledge of the wages paid and are thereby subjected to public censure or public praise. Sentiments of decency or of vanity may move the niggardly to mend their ways, but the recalcitrant are left free to bargain as they can and will. The other type of legislation adds physical to moral force. A commission is authorized to discover and to declare the minimum cost of decent subsistence and on this basis to prescribe the minimum wage that may be paid to women and minors. Employment at less than the prescribed wage subjects the employer to punishment.

The article discusses the setting of a living wage policy during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Australia and the history of federal intervention in economic and social matters. A range of laws enacted by colonial, state, and Commonwealth governments to regulate wages and working conditions in the private sector between 1890 and 1910 are examined. How these early regulations reflect the importance of fixing minimum wages and forms the basis for current wage-fixing procedures is explored. The establishment and enforcement of the 'Seven Shillings a Day’ living wage standard for unskilled labor is detailed.

The article discusses some effects of minimum wage on the economy as a whole in the United States. It states that wage legislation which contemplates the establishment, by public authority, of a minimum rate of pay for the entire economic system will have many and various repercussions and it is necessary to select for analysis only those of primary importance. The system under consideration in the study is a non-collective exchange economy, which is either entirely "closed" or is virtually free from international influences. The author states that generalized, catholic conclusions as to the effects of a blanket minimum wage upon the whole economy are extremely difficult to formulate. He adds that there are many points at which the economy might feel the influence of the regulation and fortunately the manner in which one sector may be affected usually depends in large measure upon how others are affected. The author points out that obviously, the most important single question is whether the total volume of employment will, on balance, be maintained, diminished, or increased.

This article discusses various issues related to the determination of minimum wage rates in the U.S. Since validation of the Washington Minimum Wage law by the Supreme Court in March, 1937, activity in this field has been renewed on a broad front. Many workers are now protected by federal and state minimum wage Jaws. The criteria to be followed in determining rates under these laws leave much to personal discretion. Three criteria are provided in the state laws: the minimum necessary for health, the value of services rendered and the rates prevailing for work of comparable character. The state laws, except in the case of Connecticut, apply only to women and minors; already about a million women and girls are working under minimum wage orders or fiat rate laws. Approximately four million workers, or well over a third of all employed women and children, will receive similar protection when full effect is given to legislation now on the books. Under the federal law, on the other hand, men as well as women and minors are included, so that many millions of additional workers are covered by its terms. The central problem is the determination of minimum rates of wages for a wide variety of industries throughout the country.

In most of the discussions of minimum wage laws, which find their way into print, there is a notable lack of apprehension of the one central fact of the whole matter. That fact is the variation in wages, mostly between the several establishments engaged in any trade, but sometimes also between the several trades themselves. Thus the literature upon the subject elaborates upon avenge wages, the general rise and fall of wages in successive years, and comparisons of wages in competing localities. It postulates unity, harmony and resemblance as characterizing the wage sheets of industrial establishments, whereas the truth is that they are very much unlike each other; and it is their unlikeness, which makes the opportunity for minimum wage administration. There are certain standards of wages, which are found to prevail in any state. These standards conform to good business practice and to public sentiment. But these standards are not universal. They prevail, but they are not absolute. There are many exceptions. Wages here and there are unsociably low, representing a pathological condition in business. The function of minimum wage administration is to correct these unwholesome aberrations from the prevailing standards.

The present position of the Supreme Court renders the future of mandatory minimum wage laws perilous. Since the decision in the District of Columbia case, considerable discussion has arisen as to the results which can be obtained from a law free from objectionable (to the court) features. The Massachusetts statute is the outstanding example of such a law. The first decade of the operation of the law in Massachusetts ended July 1, 1923. During these ten years wage decrees establishing minimum rates for women and girls have been made in sixteen occupations employing from 70,000 to 80,000 women and girls and covering approximately 5,000 firms. It is apparent that the Massachusetts law has done much to ameliorate the condition of working women. It does not follow that the declared object of minimum wage legislation, the securing of a cost-of-living income, has been attained. In spite of difficulties, the Massachusetts minimum wage law has done not a little to improve the condition of unskilled, unorganized female labor.

The article focuses on the minimum wage system. Good living and good citizenship depend in important part on real wages. Every industry is under obligation to pay a real wage. This requires considerably more money now than it did in 1914. Being accustomed to think of wages in terms of dollars, one thinks that wages are much larger now than they were then just because one pay more dollars. One of the ways of increasing efficiency is to pay wages that will command a high enough grade of employee to make it unnecessary for the proprietor to put in most of his time directing and correcting errors of inefficient, underpaid people. But high wages cannot be maintained unless one has a minimum wage law. To have a standard of wage high enough to give a good consuming public, it is necessary that there shall be a limit fixed by an authority outside of the personal decision of the individual employer as to what the lowest wage shall be. Wages naturally tend to go down toward the standard set by the meanest and most short-sighted employers.

To the uninitiated students of standards of living in the U.S., minimum wage legislation in the United States presents a strange anomaly. On the one hand is the continually announced and apparently accepted dictum that for the woman worker a fair wage must be a living wage; that anything less than that constitutes exploitation and parasitism on the part of the industry engaging her and that to uphold such a living standard among those whose bargaining power is weak, minimum wage laws are universally to be enacted and administered. One the other hand is the inescapable fact that of the fifteen states already having minimum wage laws upon their statute books, only three have in operation any rulings of wide application that the scientific student of minimum standards could term at all adequate. Eight have a series of substandard rulings and the remaining four have none at all. It will be the task of this article to set forth some of the reasons for this anomalous state of affairs, to point out the difficulties under which the minimum age commissions are laboring and to suggest certain principle of drafting and administration.

This article focuses on the judicial interpretation of the minimum wage in Australia. Present-day interest in the subject of the legal minimum wage in this country and the probability, amounting almost to a certainty, that one or more of the U.S. states will within the next two or three years, enact and endeavor to enforce a compulsory minimum wage law, make it worth while to inquire as to the principles on which minimum wages have been established by law in other countries. There are among U.S. citizens some persons, not lacking in intelligence, who imagine that the system of a legal minimum wage is one in which a certain definite remuneration is prescribed by statute for all wage-earners, or at least for certain classes of workers. The minimum wage which here concerns, however, and which has drawn the attention of the outside world to Australasian experience is not a wage prescribed by statute, although it is upheld by statutory authority. There are two ways in which the minimum wage has been secured in the Australasian colonies. The other way in which the minimum wage has been established in Australia is through the awards of the compulsory arbitration courts.

Several recent events have revived the interest of American economists in proposals for the public regulation of wages in private employments. Two years ago the parliament of Great Britain passed the Trade Boards act to provide for certain British industries a procedure for the regulation of wages, modelled upon that of the minimum wage boards originally established in the Australian state of Victoria by the Factory and Shops act of 1896. In the present year bills to provide for the fixing of minimum wages in underpaid employments by authority of law were introduced into the legislatures of two American states, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and in a third, Massachusetts, a commission was appointed to investigate the wages of women and minors employed within the state and report to the next legislature upon the advisability of the establishment of minimum wage boards. Recently, proposals have also been brought forward for the establishment by federal legislation of a standard minimum wage for alien immigrants. Underlying this various legislation, actual and proposed, are various different purposes. The Victorian legislation, unlike the contemporary New Zealand and subsequent Australian legislation with reference to so-called compulsory arbitration, seems to have owed its origin primarily to the desire to abolish sweating, that is, certain undesirable conditions of employment, such as excessively long hours and excessively low rates of wages.

The article focuses on minimum wage laws in the United States, focusing on the decision to raise the minimum wage in light of several economic issues. Among the issues discussed are high levels of unemployment and economic recession. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLStA) is analyzed and statistics pertaining to workers currently earning minimum wage who will benefit from the increase are presented.

Provides information on the popularity of minimum wage laws. Reason for the popularity of the laws; Impact of the laws on unemployment; Hypothesis on the relationship between minimum wage and labor units.

The article discusses the time-table of minimum wage procedure under the Fair Labor Standards Act in the U.S. Under the statute, the procedure falls into two phases, the first or industry committee phase and the Administrator phase. The industry committee phase includes the appointment by the Administrator of the industry committee, its meetings and hearings, wage recommendation and report while the Administrator phase consists of review of the industry committee records and recommendation, public hearing, oral argument and issuance of the minimum wage order. The success of the Act is dependent upon the effective functioning of its minimum wage procedure.

Comments on the article "The Economic of Minimum Wage Legislation," by Stigler in the June 1946 issue. Views of Stigler on the proposed amendment to the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938; Reasons given by Stigler for the inadequacy of minimum wages to eliminate poverty; Effect of minimum wages on employment; Flaws in the conclusions of Stigler.

The minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards act of 1938 have been repealed by inflation. Many voices are now taking up the cry for a higher minimum, say, of 60 to 75 cents per hour. Economists have not been very outspoken on this type of legislation. It is the author's fundamental thesis that they can and should be outspoken, and singularly agreed. The popular objective of minimum wage legislation, the elimination of extreme poverty-is not seriously debatable. People seek to abolish poverty in good part because it leads to undernourishment. In this connection, dietary appraisals show that in any income class, no matter how low, a portion of the families secure adequate diets, and in any income class, as high as the studies go, a portion do not. The proportion of ill-fed, to be sure, declines substantially as income rises, but it does not disappear. People cannot possibly afford to abolish malnutrition, or mal-housing, or mal-education, only by increasing incomes. Either of two inferences may be drawn. The program of increasing income must be supplemented by a program of education in diet, in housing, in education. Or the assistance to the poor should be given in kind, expertly chosen. The latter approach is administratively very complex, but quicker and in direct expenditure vastly more economical. These factors affect the choice, but a thought should be given also to the two societies to which they lead.

Poverty and unemployment are two critical issues facing the United States today. Linked to both of these is the federal minimum wage law. Established under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the purpose of the law was-and still is-to eliminate, as rapidly as possible, labor conditions thought to be harmful to the "health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers. without substantially curtailing employment or earning power." En other words, to eliminate low wages without eliminating jobs. This is a laudable goal, with which no one is likely to disagree. The question remains as to how effective the law has been in achieving this goal. Has it eliminated poverty? Or has it, to the contrary, had effects detrimental to those the law was designed to help? It is the contention here that the minimum wage law has played a significant role in causing unemployment among the most disadvantaged groups, including blacks, teenagers, unskilled workers, and people living in economically depressed regions. It is therefore proposed that further increases in the minimum wage be blocked and that the rate and coverage be held at the present level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid growth in trade unionism among wages earners since 1938 has received adequate documentation, but there has been little speculation about future developments. It would now appear that unionism among wage-earners is reaching its limits. Probably the only major areas left for organizing are the service trades and in these areas the unions seem quite content to rely on minimum wage legislation. Future growth of trade unionism must therefore depend on the reactions of white-collar workers. The purposes of this article are to trace the factors which have been responsible for the development of trade unionism among managerial grades in the coal industry, to examine the relationships that have developed between the management union and the workers unions in the coal industry, to analyse the attitude of the employer, the National Coal Board, to such unionism, to analyse and trace the evolution of the salaries and conditions of employment of the managerial grades, to consider the views of the management union on the role of management in the coal industry, to consider what lessons may be derived from the management union for future white-collar unions.

This article analyzes the role played by independent members of the British Wages Councils and Boards as of 1957, and to try to establish the qualities demanded on them. Although voluntary collective bargaining settles the wages and conditions of most employees, about four and a half million of them are protected by legislation which guarantees them a legal minimum wage and other conditions of employment. About one in five of all people in employment has a legal minimum rate of pay set by a statutory body, and enforce if necessary by the criminal as well as the civil law. Most of the wage-earners covered by the legislation receive more than the legal minima, and many are also covered by voluntary collective agreements, but beneath this actual rates and voluntary agreements are the enforceable legal minima. Today the ostensible object of statutory wage regulation is to make good any gaps left in the voluntary agreements, but the gaps are considerable ones and the Wages Councils and Boards which fill them are more than an appendage of a predominantly voluntary system of wage settlement.

This paper investigates the effects of the federal minimum wage on employment in the U. S. low-wage manufacturing sector. A key parameter for evaluating the impact of minimum wage legislation is the elasticity of demand for low-wage labor, particularly those workers whose earnings are affected by the minimum. The wage elasticities for production worker employment and man-hours are found to be approximately unity. Analysis is confined to the lowest wage manufacturing industries in an attempt to segregate statistically the impact of the minimum from the other determinants of employment and earnings.

Presents labor legislation enacted in the U.S. in 1969. Wage garnishment; Minimum wages; Labor-management relations among public employees; Occupational safety and health.

The last ten years have seen the enactment in Tanganyika of detailed laws regulating conditions of employment, the establishment of minimum-wage-fixing machinery and the creation of employers' and workers' organisations which engage in collective bargaining and the settlement of disputes and appoint members to sit with government representatives on the Labour Advisory Board. The author describes all these achievements and their concomitant problems, which have led the Government to take certain steps to maintain the stability in industrial relations that is so important for the economic development of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last ten years have seen the enactment in Tanganyika of detailed laws regulating conditions of employment, the establishment of minimum-wage-fixing machinery and the creation of employers' and workers' organisations which engage in collective bargaining and the settlement of disputes and appoint members to sit with government representatives on the Labour Advisory Board. The author describes all these achievements and their concomitant problems, which have led the Government to take certain steps to maintain the stability in industrial relations that is so important for the economic development of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]