Minimum wage is a term used to define the minimum amount of the money an employer is required to pay the wage earner for the work that is performed during a given period. The minimum wage agreement and contract cannot be changed. Minimum wages is set by wage board, wage council, competent authority or labour courts or tribunals.
This minimum wages purpose is to protect workers against low pay. This is to make sure that the workers get their share of fruit that they have worked for. This is used to protect all the employees and the people in such need of protection. Minimum wage is one of the elements of policy which helps reduce inequality, and helps overcome poverty. The help in inequality is to provide equal workplace and wage for men and women. The national minimum wage was first introduced in 1998 in the UK; this was introduced to help low-paid workers from exploitation. There is no accepted argument about what low pay is or what the minimum pay should be.
The people who support the minimum wages argue that this ensures the employees get fairer wages but the business owners who have mind of free market think otherwise, they repel minimum wage. Minimum wage is applied in the United Kingdom and most of the other countries in the world. 20 of the 27 member states of the European union (Bulgaria, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Ireland, France, Estonia, The Czech republic, Latvia, Luxembourg, Hungary, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, the Netherlands, Romania, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom has a national legislation to set the minimum wage by national agreement in January 2010.
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Everyone has their own opinion on the minimum wage depending on their own personal view and their job status. As an employer they would want the minimum wage to be low to keep the costs down but being an employee would want the wage to be high as possible in order to have disposable income. It is very easy for people to be discriminated if the work place does not have minimum wage which can lead to very poor lifestyle.
Ethical issue – There are always more workers wanting or willing to work then the amount of jobs available which is one reason why some workers are unemployed. Most employees have wages which is above the minimum rate so the law does not prevent the wage from adjusting. Minimum wage law mostly matters to least experienced members of the labour force for example teenagers. This is an ethical issue because when the minimum wage increases most of the small business owners cannot afford to have higher payroll and without the minimum wage people may be forced to work overtime or multiple jobs, put the kids into work rather than school, they will be denied basic human rights to nutrition, housing, health, education, food which can lead to deprivations.
A case study – A friend of mine was working for a care home in 2014; she was 23 years at the time. The ongoing minimum wage at the time was £6.70 per hour for people aged 21 and over. She worked there for just over two years. Her hourly pay that she was receiving was £5.00 per hour which was £1.70 less than the minimum. She didn’t realise she was paid less until one day she spoke to her colleague about the pay raise and asked what pay she was receiving, the hourly pay for her friend was £8.00 as she was a senior worker.
This still didn’t make sense how she was treated differently even after two years of her dedication to her work. She then went to her manager to get an explanation and she was told that she was not experienced when she started working for the organisation and she was provided with the training by the company free of charge. She was also offered to do a course of health and social care provided by the company. She came home and researched on what her options were and with the research she found out that the free course she was offered was funded by the government and not the company and every employee is eligible for free training when starting a new work even if they have experience in the field they are still eligible for training.
She faced here manager again to explain her research and the manager just ignored her. She then decided to go to the owner of the care home and explain everything to him and request a pay raise. Even the owner did not hear her and said he will have a meeting with the manager and get her know. She was then given a few days off from work as holidays. When she came back she was offered the pay raise of £0.50 so now her pay will be £5.50 which is still under the minimum wage so she decided to not accept the pay raise and demanded to be paid the minimum as no one at the care home was paid less than the minimum.
She was refused of being paid so she told them she will go to the high authorities. At the end she was than given the raise to the minimum wage but after 4 months they reduced her working hours from 8 hour shift to 4 hour shift and after few more months she was let off work saying that the work is not as busy as expected so we have to let you off. She knew the reason this was that she requested to be paid minimum wage. She left the work quietly and then she contacted the employment tribunal and her lawyer and explained her situation the lawyer took her case to the court and she sued the company for wage discrimination. She court then the court fined the organisation and she was provided with £10000 which was paid by the
