Conference Agenda

Wage bargaining and securing social protection for non-standard workers (employment other than the standard full-time open-ended contract) through collective bargaining has been subject to extensive research, but these studies often concentrate on the bargaining outcomes at national and sectoral levels. Although ample research has also examined company-based bargaining practices, especially in the light of the recent decentralization process, these analyses rarely explore company-based bargaining from a non-standard workers’ perspective. Less researched is thus the wage bargaining opportunities for distinct groups of non-standard workers (part-time workers, temporary workers, freelancers and individuals with zero-hour contracts) across diverse sectoral industrial relations (IR) settings.

By drawing on a large scale survey with 3120 low wage workers on the Danish labour market conducted in 2022 via Statistics Denmark, this paper offers novel insights into the wage bargaining opportunities for distinct groups of non-standard workers, including their access to overtime pay, unsocial hours payments and guaranteed paid hours across distinct sectors. We include sectors like transport, manufacturing, construction, industrial cleaning, agriculture, hotels and restaurants as these sectors are characterized by differing collective bargaining coverage and union density, besides having distinct wage-setting systems - the standard and minimum wage setting system with differing latitude for company-based wage bargaining.

Our research questions are: What are non-standard workers’ opportunities for negotiating wages at company level across diverse IR-settings; and How do distinct wage-setting systems influence their bargaining activities? Analytically, we draw on segmentation theory and insights from IR- literature, notably Visser’s (2016) four models of organized decentralization, studies on company based bargaining and non-standard work. We expect that non-standard workers are less likely to be covered by collective agreements and to utilize the company-based bargaining structures to negotiate wages and social protection than their peers in full-time jobs, and if they do, their bargaining activities are typically individualized.

Our findings partly echo our expectations, but also illuminate that there are important variations between distinct groups of non-standard workers. Most - nearly two in three – low-wage workers are covered by existing wage bargaining systems at their workplace, but this institutionalization is no guarantee against exploitation. Unpaid work, unpaid overtime and lack of compensation for unsocial hours were widespread practices, especially among certain groups of non-standard workers, notably in sectors with standard wage-setting systems. These Nordic lessons call for reflections as to the best approach to regulate non-standard work via collective bargaining in both densely and less regulated labour market.

Globally, the domestic work sector suffers from severe decent work deficits, consequently increasing workers lack of resilience to economic shocks. This paper investigates the responses of workers and their organizations which address these deficits through an analysis of the effects of a national minimum wage law in the domestic work sector.

South Africa is the chosen case study. First, it has one of the most comprehensively regulated domestic work sectors in the world. Notwithstanding, the COVID-19 lockdowns and the current economic decline have revealed chronic labour and social security deficits experienced by workers. Secondly, in 2019, South Africa engaged in a globally important legislative experiment in minimum wage regulation by adopting the National Minimum Wage Act which covers domestic work. While this Act constitutes a critical response to deepening poverty rates and income inequality, its effectiveness is thwarted by low rates of compliance and intractable challenges to statutory enforcement.

The study expands on a significant theory in labour law, namely, Lee and McCann’s theory of ‘institutional dynamism’, which refers to the capacity of labour regulations to influence informal work settings and interact with other institutions in ways that lead to improved labour outcomes. This project constitutes the first known attempt at studying the ‘institutional dynamism’ of a national minimum wage law in a largely informal setting, contributing to the scholarship on ‘informality’ and the effectiveness of labour regulation in the global South.

This project posed the following question: is there evidence of the NMWA influencing wages and which factors facilitate this influence? Both doctrinal and socio-legal research methods are employed. The paper presents a qualitative micro-study of the sector, focusing on its configuration as ‘informal’. The data was gathered through 40 semi-structured interviews with workers, employers, government representatives and civil society in Cape Town and Johannesburg during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

The findings reveal that informal norms are a greater determinant of wages than the NMWA, whose limited influence is attributable to conflicting institutional interactions. Various regulatory strategies are adopted by a network of actors to address this challenge. This includes strengthening workers empowerment; initiating sustainable dialogue with employer and employer organizations, including the facilitation of legal awareness; collective organizing efforts in pursuit of evidence-based policy change and realizing improved socio-economic conditions for workers; and instituting litigation to challenge existing legal exclusions. These responses can prove critical in bolstering the effectiveness of minimum wage laws, thus securing improved protections for workers.

A long-standing debate in labour economics concerns the prediction that minimum wages supress aggregate employment through an increase in labour costs for affected firms. However, a large body of empirical evidence finds only limited support for this prediction. In this paper, we explore a new mechanism that may help rationalize this finding: the "application effects" of the minimum wage. The increase in the minimum wage may attract more applicants, making it easier for firms to fill vacancies with qualified candidates. This may attenuate the increase in labour costs.

Exploiting frequent and detailed sectoral collective bargaining agreements in Uruguay, we test for “application effects” based on data from the largest online job board in the country. The data contains rich information on vacancies, applicants, and applications for years 2010 through 2020. We combine it with industry-by-occupation information on minimum wage hikes. We start descriptively and then employ two difference-in-difference frameworks that rely on minimum wage adjustments as quasi-experimental variation, at the industry-by-occupation and vacancy-level, respectively.

We observe a positive correlation between posted wages and applications within those broad occupations that are more substitutable between industries: clerical support workers, sales workers, and elementary occupations. We do not find such a correlation in a second group of occupations, although the economic significance of minimum wages is comparable for these (i.e., among professionals, technicians and associated professionals, craft and related trades workers). The descriptive pattern is corroborated in the two difference-in-difference frameworks.

To better understand underlying mechanisms, we are currently expanding this analysis to consider the role of amenities. For example, it is possible that firms compensate minimum wage hikes by decreasing the amenities that they offer. This could rationalize why “application effects” are absent in certain occupations.

As described above, this paper aims to contribute to the empirical literature on minimum wages (e.g., Clemens 2021 JEconPersp, Manning 2021 JEconPersp), focussing on “application effects” as a new a novel channel through which minimum wages affect employment outcomes. We also build on existing studies on the determinants of job search, some of which analyse job board data. This literature has covered wages and non-pecuniary factors (e.g., Banfi and Villena-Roldán 2019 JLaborEcon, Le Barbanchon et al. 2020 QJE). To our knowledge, however, this literature does not exploit minimum wages or analyse their interaction with amenities. In addition, those papers do not focus on differential patterns by occupation, while our paper suggests that these can be significant.