Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. None of these nations have an minimim hourly wage enshrined in law. Instead many of the base terms of employment, including wages, are decided via collective bargaining between sector trade unions and representatives of public sector and business interest organizations.
Minimum wage decided by politics is something taken for granted in many parts of the world, but ultimately it’s a question that most of all affects the suppliers (employees) and buyers (employers). The government will always be behind the times in legislation and have many other interests to juggle than yours - don’t just be a passive participant in the market.
I live in Sweden by the way, so feel free to ask me questions on the topic and I’ll do my best to answer.
Indeed but their philosophy is more inline with American economists James Galbrath’s view that a functional “capitalist” society at least needs a triumvirate to work. That is, equal parts unions, business and government.
Many parts of the english speaking developed world don’t have that and rely on a mostly two part system of government and business, with government ostensibly representing workers but alas government has been captured by business.
Nordic system is much better for wages…
in USA our unions have been smashed down to 10%, and ironically the majority of those are government employees and police
in USA we have twenty states that still pay minimum wage (or less). They dodge minimum wage law multiple ways, all bullshit, all wage theft
Poland has better benefits for workers than USA. We have been surpassed by Eastern Europe, thanks labor party!*
*that’s a joke, we have no labor party
Works the same way in Switzerland. Some places may have a minimum wage locally, but it’s rare and on a national level there’s nothing. However the unions aren’t strong in all sectors so some jobs really do pay shit.
And that is exactly why gig workers are still getting screwed in Scandinavia. Talk to a Wolt delivery person, and you will quickly support a federal minimum wage.
As I understand it, they are not employees, minimum wage does not apply. They are each independent, legally running their own company. A company can sell their services as cheap as they want.
I don’t understand how that works, because it’s illegal to run a company and then work as if you’re an employee. Specially not when the purpose is obviously to get around the law for employees.
I work at a museum in the US dedicated to Nordic history and heritage. We were all at-will employed until we unionized recently. It is still shocking to me the amount of cognitive dissonance people are capable of as they long for the prosperity of the Nordic countries, but then openly bash unions and workers. The work culture is so bad here, it’s like everyone is under a persistent fog.
Any talk of abolishing the wage system?
It’s amazing how far right we’ve come since the late 1800s
Ive always said I would rather have a maximum income than a minimum one. minimum will solve itself when you make sure one person can’t like buy every single bushel of wheat that the world produces in a year.
Wealth caps
Nobody should have a networth of over 10 million
From what I’ve heard, Norwegian unions are actively against a national minimum wage, because they believe that would act as a low anchor harming their negotiations.
Although there is no national minimum wage in Norway, certain industries or specific groups do have a specific minimum wage. For example, there is a legally mandated minimum wage for minors, to avoid them being exploited in summer jobs.
In other cases, unions have negotiated fixed levels for their focus areas (e.g. engineers working government jobs), and everyone working those jobs, whether they’re members of the union or not, will get paid those levels. Sometimes everyone in the group gets a raise simultaneously as a result of annual union negotiations.
Yeah, what workers see as a floor, companies see as a ceiling.
I’d like to provide some further context. This wasn’t always the case here in Sweden, obviously.
A big shift in our society happened because of the massacre in Ådalen.
This was in the 1930s, during the great depression. People didn’t have jobs, particularly in Ådalen where the unemployment rate was around 85-90%. People were starving. So they worked together, they demonstrated, and the worker parties gained significant support.
The powers that be didn’t like this, naturally. They tried to put a lid on the events, and called in the military. To cut a long story short, the military opened fire and several bystanders were killed. It led to nation-wide demonstrations, and the Social Democrats gained significant following, leading to them being the majority government for decades afterwards. We saw social and worker reforms, and is largely the reason Sweden is held in such high regard internationally.
Things don’t really last however. Private interests are trying to dismantle the system we have here, because it gives workers too much bargaining power. IF Metall has been striking against Tesla for coming up on three years at this point. Tesla has their supporters, because obviously they do. People don’t get that the reason for the strike isn’t because Tesla’s workers necessarily have it bad, but because Tesla is trying to undermine the system we have here, and set a precedent for others to do the same.
In e.g. the U.S., employers have significant power over workers. Some states have at-will employment, where either an employer or a worker can just walk out on the contract whenever. This is only ever to the worker’s benefit when the market is looking for workers; I can’t recall a time in my lifetime where this has been the case. They dangle people’s livelihoods and through things like healthcare, their very lives, to enslave workers.
We are headed down the same path, with well over a decade of right-wing rhetoric, privatisation, and budgets eroding our systems.
It’s election year this year, and I really wish people would remember where we were a hundred years ago.
its tough to fully grasp, i am maybe only now getting it. but we must live in a constant state of revolution.
Yeah. It’s the one thing I find the most exhausting about how democracy works. It requires an ongoing participation, and our society is sadly structured in a manner where that isn’t easily done for everyone, and as such not everyone gets proper representation.
It’s further hampered by the fact that individuals and other institutions with financial means can employ people to do political work for them. This just isn’t feasible for individuals, many of us don’t have much money to spare, and we’re fully occupied between our professional, and our personal lives.
So once participation in democracy starts slipping, when workers are unable to attend, our rights start getting eroded.
This isn’t exactly helped by media, social and otherwise. We live in an attention economy where explosive headlines and bold attention-grabbing statements win out. We don’t get accurate representations of reality, and thus the decisions we make are based on whatever lies we’ve adopted to become our worldview.
The only real solution I see to this is to empower people to have the ability to partake in unions and cultivate a political interest. Otherwise we’ll just be ruled by the oligarchs and we’ll return to a more or less feudal state of things.
I’m trying really hard to engage politically in my area, but honestly the only party that seems to put themselves out there is the nazi party, so I’m hardly surprised that they’ve been garnering a lot of followers for the past decade.
“Minimum wage means the company wants to pay you even less but it’s illegal” lol
But seriously even tho the min wage hasn’t increased since 2009 in the U.S. I think most fast food places start at $9 or $10 / hr. Still a slap in the face, but they at least realized the min wage was way too low and nobody would work at that pay.
Wouldn’t the problem of the government not keeping up be solved by just indexing minimum wage to inflation?
That was the intent, says so in 1938 Labor Law (it was to rise, the minimum being enough to feed a family of four and keep them above the poverty line).
bOtH pArTiEs abandoned this long ago. But stock market is at 50K!!!#
In Oregon we changed our minimum wage to go up some each year for a few years then be indexed to inflation via the consumer price index. Feel like that plus an extra bit of indexing to population helps a lot.
cali does raise thier MW often, but its also HCOL so im not surprising oregons doing this.
Sure, but generally by collective bargaining produces a higher wage for the employee
Por qué no los dos?
son mutuamente excluyentes
No they’re not?
They can be used as a low anchor in bargaining which may undermine negotiations
It used to work like that in Italy, although not with a national minimum wage but with union-negotiated contracts. At least some of them had a clause that automatically raised base salaries according to inflation.
I read somewhere that clause was removed because it’d cause a vicious loop where raising inflation meant higher wages, which in turn drove up inflation.
At face value it makes sense, but I’m no expert so I can’t say whether that’s correct or some bs to keep wages low.
My understanding of the research is that a higher minimum wage can increase costs, but as a lesser proportion than the increase (edit; to the wage). Labor costs are only portion of expenses for any business, and workers making minimum wage only reflect a portion of the workforce. So, there’s not a zero effect, but I believe it’s usually less than fear mongering would suggest.
I haven’t read into this in at least five years, so happy to admit my own incorrectness if someone knows better.
So that’s why they all have to work 3 jobs at least to pay rent. Oh wait, that’s only in ‘Murica the case
talk about worrying a out minutia instead of actual outcomes
gonna assume this is engagement bait
My first time in Norway (2010) I noticed right away that the prices were pretty obscene, so the first thing I did when I arrived at the hostel was to ask the guy behind the counter what the minimum wage was. He didn’t even know the concept of minimum wage.
That is just one guy behind a counter. Of course we know what the concept of minimum wage is in the Nordics, it is very much part of the Nordic model.
The point is that there are people that don’t. And that tells something very interesting about labor relations.
Well, it’s painfully clear you don’t
I used to teach English in Japan. There was apparently a time long ago when native English teachers were treated very badly in Japan. The companies would pay them a pittance and there are stories that some companies confiscated teacher passports. Very bad stuff.
So one remedy that the Japanese government pursued was to establish a minimum wage for teachers. But it didn’t increase for I think decades, and the amount was, once again, difficult to live on. I don’t know whether Japan has increased this minimum wage since then.
Minimum wages need to be based on some other value so that they adjust naturally and we don’t have to wait on lawmakers to manually adjust them, even if they could pass manual updates.
One other idea is to have a wealth ceiling. And then base minimum wage off of that. For example, say that the maximum is X and the minimum wage would be X divided by a billion. If Elon musk wants to have 20 billion, then minimum wage would be $20/hour. That’s just a quick example and not meant to be indicative of the actual numbers.
I used to teach English in Japan. There was apparently a time long ago when native English teachers were treated very badly in Japan. The companies would pay them a pittance
I dunno when you left but I’m pretty sure wages for English teachers suck these days. Probably not so much black company activity (confiscating passports etc) but in the last 15ish years there have been enough weebs flooding into the country such that companies can pay peanuts.
I like the wealth ceiling idea. Would encourage the 2% to “deal with” the 1%, just so they can lower their minimum wage.
Probably gets a bit dystopian quickly.
