Hmm. I support a national minimum wage, but regionalising it will lead to variations, and an uncivilised race to the bottom with cities and regions pitching their min wage lower and lower still (against the wishes of the inhabitants who elect those councils…?) to attract corner-cutting companies, who cannot take a long or rounded view (grow and develop your workforce works better than exploiting ‘em and wearing them into the dirt).

unions can take specific account of layoffs when they are mobilising workers in readiness for the collective bargaining agreements. Consider the words of the Supreme Court of Canada on the subject:

Yes well thats bollocks isn’t it Unions cannot sit the right way round on a Lavatory seat still less understand the consequences of their greed . We had years of high unemployment as a result of Union power during the 6os and 70s . Now we have a Unionised Public sector sucking the life out of the country when the rest of us (80%) buy them final salary pensions . This will of course cause unemployment as it will cause firms to go out of business by virtue of reducing growth and lumbering us all with debt.
You think Unions can take account of that or that they would even if they understood it . Not likely.
I can`t see what good a minimum wage does really , you are not obliged to take the job and if it is too expensive then no job will be offered . I suppose you could argue it skews the economy away from low wage industry but I doubt it and see no evidence of it

“Regional minimum wages might pressure companies to move to where they find the cheapest labour”

Won’t the place where the labour is cheaper be the places with the worst structural unemployment problems, where attracting investment to create new jobs is the most vital, though?

(the wider point about minimum wages not being a progressive policy is interesting and deserves more thought. I’m not sure that specifically opposing *local rather than national* minimum wages follows, though)

I agree with John B. I’m a bit sceptical as to regional minimum wages, but I find this argument that companies will migrate to areas of cheap labour hard to believe. Why is it that so many companies choose to be located in the south-east, whereas in other regions they’d find people willing to work for less? Because wage rates are not the be all & end all when it comes to locating jobs, even unskilled jobs. To an extent, certain jobs, for example in shops, can’t be relocated anyway. Some kind of retail or other will always exist, & if one closes down another of a different sort will take its place.

My preferred way of raising incomes would be to attract decent employers & ensure that people are qualified to do skilled jobs, but there will always be undesirable jobs & it has to be worth someone’s while to do them. Let’s not forget that a lot of employees, such as students & a large number of over-65s, don’t urgently need the money & are only working to supplement their income. If you offered them £2 an hour they might decide they don’t want the money that much, so you might even find that having no minimum wage makes people disinclined to work. What would all the right-wing genuises do then?

The national minimum wage is a bit clunking, but it still plays a useful role in making work pay for low earners. People said it would cause mass unemployment but it now looks as if they were wrong. I am not minded to listen to “libertarians” & Thatcherites shedding crocodile tears, & putting themselves forward as tribunes of the poor.

I found your arguments most unconvincing. I think a regional minimum wage is an acceptable proposition. The hurdle is perhaps the need for a regional government to set it.

A minimum wage is a safety net against exploitation. However, a national “one size fits all” solution is inappropriate. A wage that meets London living costs will deter employment in the further regions. As a result we have a compromise that deters some gainful employment whilst failing to meet basic needs in the South East.

We can keep a National Minimum, perhaps allowing it to not rise for a few years, and introduce higher reional minima. In the South East, a higher minimum would deter economic migration from outside the UK (in general if there are two candidates of equal skills and equal willingness to work, then the fluent local will always win. At present wages are (or were!) suppressed by a pool of cheap migrant labour.

The problem is who sets these? Suppose (laughable I know), that the Mayor of London could raise a minimum wage. What would happen to employment at the Greater London boundary – it would migrate just beyond. It is easier to delineate Wales and Scotland.

Such competition for investment is not new but is a reality. Every RDA or town hall is competing for inward investment – and so they should. Wage costs are only one part of that competition, transport, workforce skills etc are also considerations. However low you drive wages you are not going to create full employment in some areas and the economic message must be for some population shift.

The argument is made that a minimum wage demotivates people in the “struggle” for higher wages. Why? I can earn a much reduced wage if I want but am still motivated for more.

Similarly the suggestion that a minimum wage replaces collective bargaining is false. Why does it? Surely it just sets the starting point for the bargaining.

I disagree with the vision that workers only achieve status through collective bargaining. Ie your value, your esteem and your future come through your trade union.

Nope, not for me. There are two flaws. Firstly the minimum wage safety net protects those in businesses to small to be unionised or where the individual is too exposed to complain. Think not of the Longbridge shop floor but of the teenager in the chippy on the corner, the back street garage etc etc.

Secondly, individuals negotiate, move on if they don’t like what is offered. I would rather empower individuals than make them dependent on unions.

I am sorry, a national command economy with a single minimum wage, employees whose fulfilment is achieved via union membership, collective bargaining, and the “struggle” for higher wages, sounds like the language of socialism to me.

I agree John H, a minimum wage does really just set the starting point for bargaining. If we had better rights and a stronger culture in the UK for collective bargaining like in Sweden, then maybe this would mean we could move beyond a “one size fits all” minimum wage which doesn’t always produce the benefits for those it’s been designed for.

You say that it would be laughable if the Mayor of London could raise a minimum wage as employment would migrate beyond the capital. That hasn’t deterred KMPG, Citigroup and Barclays from introducing the living wage in the city?

I think it is important to explore what the minimum hourly wage needed to live above the poverty line is – and that may be different from region to region (compare London and the North East for example).

We don’t all have “living wage units” like at the GLA in London, but the “minimum income standard” project run by the JRF provides a well researched measure of how much a worker needs to earn to avoid the effects of poverty, such as ill health, poor levels of child development and social exclusion. Calculations can even be made for different family types. Have a look at http://www.minimumincomestandard.org/cost_calculator/reckoner/index.htm.

If the idea of a minimum wage is designed to build a safety net for a minimum income standard then it absolutely fails to help those who are out of work.

A regional minimum then debases the reasoning behind it even further and creates an unsatisfactory half-way house between job creation and income security.

This undesirable situation can be resolved by introducing a basic income instead.