A presentation by Joan Elizabeth Abbas (University of Bergen). This event is part of the Social Policy Research Colloquium.
This presentation shares early findings and arguments from an ongoing, historical case study of policies for low-paid workers in the United Kingdom. We show how the deregulation of collective bargaining and the erosion of ‘Wage Councils’ under the Thatcher and Major governments triggered policy responses in terms of increased public transfers to low-earning households from the late 1970s. The introduction of the National Minimum Wage by New Labour in 1998 was in part an unsuccessful attempt to contain the planned expansion of tax credits for working households, a pillar of New Labour’s redistributive agenda. Later, the Conservative party not only supported but undertook significant political intervention to control minimum wage setting, boosting the minimum wage to among the highest hourly rates in the OECD while, somewhat unsuccessfully, retrenching in-work benefits. We consider to what extent these developments are the result of technocratic puzzling over how to respond to undesirable effects of liberalisation and/or ruling parties’ need to compete in democratic elections amid a context of increasing volatility in British politics. At a more theoretical level we argue that the liberalization of industrial relations has led to increased intervention by the state in the regulation of low wages. The shape of state intervention is conditioned by governing parties’ strategies for winning electoral support in a democratic political system.
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