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Re: Labour Election Posters
Some opponents of the Minimum Wage that I didn't know about - BBC
Quote:
..... it took years of campaigning before the minimum wage became law, and the initial opposition came not from the political right or from business, where you might expect, but from the left.
In the 1970s and early-1980s, most British trade unions were adamantly opposed to the concept of a minimum wage.
They feared that it would undermine the cherished principle of free collective bargaining and that it would pull down pay rates above it, reducing so-called "differentials", the gap between the skilled and unskilled workers.
And there was self-interest at work too. If a minimum wage protected people's wages, then what was the incentive to join a union?.....
.....Even into the 1990s, there was no consensus about the minimum wage on the left.
Can you guess which current cabinet minister wrote this? "The allure of a minimum wage is deceptive and should be resisted ... Fostering a high wage, high skill economy is the only way to reverse Britain's relative economic decline and to generate the resources to eradicate poverty. But the minimum wage is not the answer. If anything the minimum wage will make it even harder to achieve these ends."
The answer: Ed Balls, writing in 1991.
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