One Hundred Years of British Minimum Wage Legislation
| Author | Simon Deakin,Francis Green |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2009.00729.x |
| Published date | 01 June 2009 |
| Date | 01 June 2009 |
One Hundred Years of British Minimum
Wage Legislation
Simon Deakin and Francis Green
Abstract
The Trade Boards Act 1909 was a landmark in the development of minimum
wage regulation in Britain and around the world. Although their powers were
limited, the trade boards had immediate and tangible effects in terms of raising
living standards, and over time they became a core part of the system of state
support for collective wage determination. While influential overseas, the wages
councils (as the trade boards became after 1945) were eventually seen as
providing only a partial solution to the problem of low pay. In the 1980s, their
powers were reduced under the influence of deregulatory labour market policies,
prior to their abolition in 1993. The British national minimum wage (‘NMW’),
which was introduced in 1998, despite appearances, is not a universal national
minimum of the kind which the Webbs and other Fabian writers argued for a
century ago. Notwithstanding a growing consensus that the supposed negative
economic effects of the minimum wage have not been borne out by the experi-
ence of the NMW, public policy has yet to take fully on board its potential
benefits, including the reduction of social costs and the promotion of social
partnership.
This special issue of the BJIR marks the centenary of the passage through the
United Kingdom Parliament of the Trade Boards Act 1909. This statute was
not the first enactment of minimum wage legislation in the modern era, for
similar laws had been passed in Australia and New Zealand in the 1890s. But
among the larger nations this was a first, and it heralded waves of twentieth-
century wage regulation around the world, and much associated scholarship.
We celebrate this anniversary with a selection of papers from several
countries.
The Trade Boards Act, which became law on 20 October 1909, empowered
the relevant government ministry of the day, the Board of Trade, to set up a
board in any industry in which wage rates were ‘exceptionally low compared
Simon Deakin is at the University of Cambridge. Francis Green is at the University of Kent.
We are grateful to Alex Bryson for comments on an earlier draft.
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2009.00729.x
47:2 June 2009 0007–1080 pp. 205–213
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2009. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
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