sri lanka

by

Wage Theft

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2023

THREE years have gone by since the WHO declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Termed as the world’s most serious humanitarian crisis since World War II, it is still being debated whether the pandemic is over or not as new infections and deaths occur in a number of countries. By February 2023, 6.8 million people had died. Besides, hundreds of millions of people lost jobs globally, millions saw their salaries cut or work hours reduced. Most countries have not yet returned to the levels of employment and hours worked before the outbreak. According to an ILO report, informality and working poverty have risen further with the Covid-19 crisis.

Continue reading →
by

Nobel Prize and Minimum Wages

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2021.

The Nobel Prize for Economics for the year 2021 awarded to David Card for his contributions to scholarship on minimum wages has vindicated trade unions, labour and human rights advocates and pro-labour economists the world over. Card’s work in 1994 refuted the long-held hypothesis that increases in minimum wage reduces employment. At the time, 90 per cent of professional economists believed that a hike in minimum wage was bad for the economy. In Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage, Card and Alan Krueger presented evidence that minimum wage hike has either no effect or a positive effect on employment.

Continue reading →
by

Minimum Wage – The Bare Essentials

Published in Dawn, March 21st, 2021

No aspect of labour economy is as divisive and as controversial as minimum wage. On one side are economists and employers who think minimum wage creates distortion in the labour market, leads to unemployment and lowers productivity. Add to this the anti-poor section who thinks the poor are lazy, illiterate and deserve low wages! On the other side are sociologists, political economists, pro-poor policymakers who think all human beings have a right to a decent living and thus need a wage floor to put their feet on the ground so as not to fall into the abyss of poverty.

Debate on minimum wage has intensified in the 21st century since the American economists challenged the classical view and presented empirical evidence that minimum wage increases do not have adverse effect on employment in Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage in 1995. Factors which impact productivity are workers’ education and skills and technology. However, these topics, worthy of greater debate in Pakistan, do not receive as much attention or ignite sentiments as does minimum wage.

Continue reading →