The relationship between Wage and Price.
Wages are related to prices with some
conditions: The wage increase must exceed the increase in labour productivity,
and the relationship between wages and prices involves the incidence of the
labour cost increase.
We should interpret ‘wage’ here as ‘a
living wage’, and why do we need a living wage?
By a living wage in US means an absolute
minimum, where that someone working full-time should never fall below the
poverty line. The exact amount is varies from state to state or city to city,
but generally push for between $6.50 and $7.50 an hour, with health benefits.
Hard working people should be able to afford the necessities of live for
themselves and their families.
We believe that hard work should be rewarded.
It is fundamentally unfair for a human being to do an honest day’s work and be
poor at the end of it, and even more unfair for that person’s children to grow
up in poverty.
The living wage system should be improved
by time to time and making the legal minimum wage a living wage.
In US around the country community
campaigns have been directing at establishing standards on contracting out of
public services, conditions on economic development funds, or outright
increases in minimum wages.
A living wage campaign refers to any of
the following substantive demands,
This realistic idea to reach appropriate
living wage will not impact directly to the rate of inflation, since the rise
in the overall or average price of all goods and services is caused by many
factors such as rate of interest, foreign currency exchange rate and degree of
all industries efficiency.
Labour – Management Cooperation
The International Experience
Here we see that it is the Japanese
culture which makes Japanese management different with the American management,
in particular all matters touching human relationship.
As soon as a person has passed the
selection process to enter a company, he or she will become a member of the
company or the group. A member of a group is considered an organic part of the
group, similar to a finger on a person’s body. If the finger is out, the whole
body feels the pain.
Based on that
philosophy Japanese companies generally adhere to life time employment. Even after retirement, the company will assist its members to find
another job or activity, if they still want to work.
Even in some companies, they create a
special Division of Responsibilities for Reducing Industrial Accidents.
Employers in establishing Measures to
Prevent Industrial Accidents get a full support from Labour Unions and Business
Organizations, while Individual Workers support the execution of the Measures
by showing their cooperation and compliance. They work as a solid team-work,
having same objective and responsibilities for the sake of safety & health
programs and the effective of company and social interest.
The above internal groups get assistance
and facility from external group, including Designers, Manufacturers and
Importers and also getting support from Organizations with an Interest in
Safety & Health and the Researchers to make the Measures to Prevent
Industrial Accidents accepted by all group concerns and work well under control
of a required standard.
ESOP’s: The Ultimate in Labour
Participation
What is an Employee Stock Ownership
Plan?
An employee stock ownership plan is a
tax qualified plan similar in certain respects to a pension or a profit sharing
plan. Those other plans are designed to invest away from the sponsoring
company, while an ESOP is mandated to invest primarily in the stock of the
employer.
The ESOP is the only qualified plan that
can borrow money. It can purchase stock from the sponsoring company or from its
stockholders. That’s why, the ESOP is called as an
instrument of corporate finance.
The ESOP is an employee trust to which
the sponsoring corporation can make tax deductible contributions in amount
equal to principal and interest to enable the ESOP to repay the lender.
The loan can be made to the ESOP by a
bank or by the corporation or even by the selling stockholder. The lenders look
the corporation for its ability to make contributions to the ESOP to service
its debt.
The stock that is purchased by the ESOP
is allocated to the employee participants according to their compensation. The
employee accounts are subject to a vesting schedule. If they leave before being
fully vested, they forfeit some of the value of their stock accounts and the
forfeitures are reallocated to those who remain with the company.
The stock held by the ESOP of a private
corporation is voted by the ESOP trustee, generally at the direction of the
ESOP administration committee appointed by the corporation’s board of
directors. The employee participants vote only on certain grave issues such as
merger or liquidation.
All of this description makes us more
understand why ESOP’s programs and its mechanisms are stated as The Ultimate in
Labour Participation.
Comparable Worth: Equal Money for Equal
Value
The goal of comparable worth is to close
the earnings or pay gap by having organizations set wages for different jobs to
reflect differences in the value of the job. This value would be measured by
the job’s basic characteristic, primarily skill, effort, responsibility and
working conditions instead of discrimination based on sex, race, colour,
religion or national origin.
The employment non discrimination seeks
to prevent discrimination based on race, gender, religion, national origin,
physical disability, and age by employers. There is also growing body of law
preventing or occasionally justifying employment discrimination based on sexual
orientation. Discriminatory practices include bias in hiring, promotion, job
assignment, termination, compensation, and various types of harassment. It also
contains an implicit guaranty that each person receives equal protection of the
law.
In US constitutions discrimination in
the private sector is not directly constrained by the constitution, but has
become subject to a growing body of federal and state statutes.
It provides that where workers perform
equal work in jobs requiring equal skill, effort, and responsibility and
performed under similar working conditions, they should be provided equal pay.
It is an illegal for employers to discriminate in hiring, discharging,
compensation, or terms condition, and privileges of employment.