Basic Income-Freedom of Contract vs Statutory Minimum Standards

Beschreibung

The paper focuses on the basic question on how minimum standards can be introduced by in parallel taking into account economic interests, such as flexibility and competitiveness, as well as employees protection interests. It therefore first differentiates between basic or minimum income and minimum wages. It then focusses not only on the legislative competences for wage setting, but also on the historical development of wage and standard setting in labour law. It is argued that from a historical point of view, employees interests were always deemed to be better represented at a collective level rather than at the level of the single employment contract. In the following, the paper analyses three possible ways of guaranteeing a basic income: individual agreement, uniform national and collectively agreed minimum wages. To this end, the legal background as well as current economic data are taken into account. For better illustration of the argument that for meriting the advantages of wage setting-mechanisms, the whole (legal) system has to assessed, a closer look is taken at the Austrian system and its main features responsible for guaranteeing wages at or above the national median wage, without providing for a uniform national minimum wage.

Zeitraum	25 Juni 2015 → 27 Juni 2015
Ereignistitel	LLRN Conference 2015
Veranstaltungstyp	Keine Angaben
Bekanntheitsgrad	International