Tuesday 29 October 2013

Benefits And Drawbacks Of The Minimum Wage Laws

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.

The move to set up legislation on wages did not commence on fixing a minimum that a worker should be paid. It allowed the stakeholders to institute boards and legislative councils that could help to deal with the conflicts relating to labor matters. Whenever there is possible conflict situation, the councils and boards helps to arbitrate so as to get solutions that can avert looming strikes.

There are benefits to the labor law that seeks to set minimum wages that can be paid to workers. It helps to close the gap that would allow for exploitation by some employers on their workers. Where there are rules and regulations to be adhered to, possible abuses can be prosecuted within the law and compensation to the exploited workers can be made.

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.

Enforcing minimum wage bill as a country may have a number of drawbacks as well. For instance, most companies will want to outsource workers from less paying countries if the salary threshold set is beyond their budgets. Some companies will also regulate their job groups to make sure that the highest paid is not pocketing much, to the detrimental of employees.

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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