Pros And Cons Of Having Minimum Wage Laws In Place

By Rachael Gutierrez


Minimum wage laws are measures that the governments set to prohibit employers against exploiting their workers by setting the lowest limit for salaries remuneration that can be paid. Many countries around the world normally have legislation meant to provide such protection for the employees against exploitation by their bosses on matters relating to salaries. Actually most nations previously regarded these rules and regulation as vital requirements.

At the same time there countries that only applied these laws to cover children and women, but the famous Great Depression pushed most of these countries to extend it to cover the general workers. Nonetheless, these rules and regulations were not applied to all industries but merely a selected few. For example, France as a country allowed the already existing labor laws to be used. In the United States on its part, specific labor regulations were looked at as being against the constitution.

Generally, the move to set legislation on wages never started by setting the minimum remunerations allowed for workers. It gave room for stakeholders to set up boards and councils that could help resolve possible disputes in relation to labor. In case of labor conflicts, these councils and boards would help to arbitrate so as to curb possible resolves to strikes.

There are a number of advantages associated with existence of labor law which sets remuneration threshold that is payable to laborers. It usually helps to deal with possible gaps exposing workers to exploitation by some unscrupulous employers. Wherever there are rules and regulations to be followed strictly, possible employee abuses can be easily brought to justice within the available law and agreed compensation made to the worker.

The other advantage is increased living standards due to rise in income after the minimum earning is raised. When a country has not put measures to protect its citizens against bosses who demand a lot but pay less, people with lowest income will remain poor. However, once the lowest possible pay is raised people will have improved living standards.

There are also some drawbacks associated with having minimum wage bill in place. For example, once the lowest pay to employees is set, companies might generally resolve to outsource workers from the lower paying nations. A company may also decide to regulate the highest job groups which would turn out to be disadvantageous to workers

Increasing the threshold on remuneration can also have side effects on the workers living standards. This is because once the threshold is raised; the cost of production will be high and even commodities become expensive for the citizens. It is common that people will want more in all sectors. Taxes too will basically go up and lowest paid workers remain in the poverty bracket.

Setting minimum wage laws also lead to raised unemployment rates. This is because companies will not want to hire more workers since they may not be able to pay them as required. For this reason, people will hardly find jobs. Other companies may consider retrenching its workers. They would do this to reduce their overall expenditure.




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