المستخلص: |
Setting minimum wages aims in principle to alleviating poverty and earnings inequality among workers through providing decent wages for wage earners, preventing the exploitation of workers by employers, and promoting a fair wage structure. Yet, setting minimum wages is not an easy task. Governments or the bargaining parties need to reconcile two opposite considerations. The first are social considerations of workers needs, standards of living and earnings inequality, which pressure to increase the minimum wage. The second are economic considerations of productivity, job creation, and costs and price increases which pressure to keep the minimum wage at a low level. In practice, the minimum wage policy has benefits and costs due to the economy-wide effects on earnings level and distribution, employment, the price level, and the government budget. This paper reviews the institutional framework of minimum wage enforcement along with this policy’s economic and social effects, the international experiences in setting and adjusting minimum wages, and the empirical evidence in support of/against the minimum wage enforcement. We conclude that setting and enforcing a sound minimum wage policy is of extreme importance, especially for developing countries, given the large number of workers who are impacted. In this context, selection of appropriate criteria to fix minimum wage rates is important to ensure that they meet the objectives set for them, and to compromise the views of different stakeholders in the decision-making process.
|