Follow-up publication to the Russell Sage Foundation's project Low-wage Work in Europe.
The AIAS participated in the long and intensive research project intiated and funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, New York. This led to the publication of the book Salverda, Van Klaveren and Van der Meer, eds., Low-wage Work in the Netherlands (2008), in the good company of similar books for Denmark, France, Germany and the UK. This will soon be followed by a volume that compares, on the one hand, the experiences of the five European countries and the US, and, on the other hand, those of the five industries that were the focus of the research: Call centres, Food-processing industry, Super markets, Hotels, and Hospitals.
In the meantime the ILO’s International Labour Review (volume 148 no 4) just published a special issue: “Low-Wage Work in Europe and the United States”, edited by Paul Osterman of MIT. Gerhard Bosch draws the general comparison of low-wage employment and relates this to institutions such as the minimum wage, collective bargaining and active labour market policies. The other five contributions combine a country focus with an industry focus to elaborate on the results obtained in both parts of the research – countries and industries. They examine Hotels and Denmark, Food processing and France, Call centres and Germany, Hospitals and the UK. From the AIAS, Maarten Van Klaveren, Wiemer Salverda and Kea Tijdens contribute “Retail jobs in the Netherlands: Low pay in a context of long-term wage moderation”. They argue that wage moderation has been at the heart of the Netherlands’ model of socio-economic governance since the 1980s. Low-paid employment has grown significantly, the improvement of lower wages being constrained by declining minimum wages. Lagging incomes and consumption have depressed demand in retail, whose workforce – especially young people – accepted low-paid, part-time jobs. Low pay tends to reduce job quality – a phenomenon which has been heightened by the exceptionally long tail of youth minimum wages in the Netherlands and the education grant system allowing students to work and skewing the labour market against young full-time jobseekers. The current crisis may thwart retail’s budding re-professionalization of the super markets’ young work force.
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