The Japanisation of British industry? Instances from a high growth area

Here the authors make two arguments, Japanese industry is characterised by distinctive practices, but these predominate in only certain ‘leading edge’ sectors and were introduced mainly to ensure labour supply. Second, Britain's managers are increasingly outside the internal labour markets of large corporations. In this respect British firms are not becoming ‘Japanese’.     

Bank Influence and the Failure of US Monetary Policy during the 1953–54 Recession

This paper presents archival and econometric evidence that challenges the conventional belief that independent central banks are necessary to stabilise economies on non-inflationary growth paths. The evidence suggests that, when the US central bank—the Federal Reserve—became independent of democratic control in March 1951, it became dependent on the large banks. It is shown that excessive banker influence caused the Federal Reserve to miss its first opportunity to stabilise the economy, during the 1953–54 recession.     

The Road is Long: Thirty Years of Equality Legislation in Britain

This article critically reflects upon the development of British employment equality law, tracking a positive yet hesitant, uneven and incomplete trajectory from anti‐discrimination towards equality, and from piecemeal and patchwork coverage towards inclusiveness, integration and intersectionality. It argues that the opportunities provided by the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights and the proposed Single Equality Act should be taken to address remaining weaknesses in the legislative equality package and the limitations in enforcement approaches which the article highlights.     

New Labour and the labour market

The recent run of good macroeconomic news masks mounting evidencethat worklessness is increasingly concentrated on selected individuals,households, and socio-economic groups and in geographical areas.These distributional aspects have been overlooked or ignoredover the last 20 years, but we believe they now form the mostpressing labour-market and social problems facing this administration.We focus on what we view as the government's selected priorities:the concentration of unemployment on certain individuals, groups,and areas; increasing inactivity, especially marked among lesseducated, older men; low pay, persistence of low wages, andits relationship with job loss; and the distribution of workacross households and child poverty. Many of these problemsleave lasting scars on individuals, so that successful interventionmay beneficially change an individual's life-chances. We examinethe evidence on each of these issues and the current state ofpolicy aimed to reduce their scale or intensity.     

THE EFFECT OF MINIMUM WAGES ON UK AGRICULTURE

Since the abolition of the Wages Councils in September 1993, agriculture is the only sector in the UK economy covered by any form of minimum wage legislation. However, the recent denunciation of an ILO convention covering minimum wages in agriculture has paved the way for the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Boards. This paper investigates the impact of the system of minimum wages on the level and structure of earnings and employment in agriculture. On wages, our main conclusion is that the minimum wages set by the Agricultural Wages Boards are important determinants of the average level and distribution of earnings in UK agriculture. On employment, our main conclusion is that there is no evidence that minimum wages have reduced the level of employment in agriculture. If anything, our estimates imply a weak positive, though statistically insignificant, impact of minimum wages on employment. This seems to be true when we disaggregate by sex and skill.     

Wages Councils: Was There a Case for Abolition?

The 1993 Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act removed the remaining minimum wage protection for some 2.5 million low paid workers by abolishing the last 26 UK Wages Councils. The Government's case for abolition rested on three key arguments: (1) minimum wages do little to alleviate poverty since most covered workers do not live in poor households; (2) when in operation, minimum wages reduced employment in covered industries; (3) the problems of poverty that the wages councils were set up to deal with in 1909 are not relevant in today's labour market. In this paper we address each of these points in turn. We find that: (a) 50 per cent of families with at least one earner being paid wages council rates come from the poorest 20 per cent of families; (b) the existing evidence suggests that abolishing the Wages Councils is unlikely to create jobs; (c) the widening earnings distribution in the UK means that low pay is an increasingly important determinant of poverty. If anything, there appears to be an increasing need for minimum wage legislation in the UK.