Workshop: Wage Analysis in a Globalising Environment

In its multi-annual research program WAGE develops three main research areas:

1. Global convergence of regional wage

•  Wages and economy/technology
• Wages and migration

2. The issue of a decent wage/wage dispersion

• Youth wages
• Gender wage gap
• Migrant wages
• Elderly people wages

3. Influencing wages: wage policy

• Trade unions and Employer’s organisations
• Government policy

This Amsterdam workshop will focus on

• Social partners and wage issue in the long run (since 1950/60)

• Wages are quite strongly related to growth and productivity, but at the level of the sector or of the company, their evolution also depends on negotiations between unions and employers.
• Since 1950, in Europe and in most developed countries, two periods seem to be in opposition: a balance of power favourable to unions until 1980 and to the employers from 1980s to today
• The idea of the workshop is less a comprehensive review of all the possible or existing wage strategies in Europe, than a methodological analysis of the links between wage strategy of social partners and wage developments (also inequalities or dispersion)
• A target goal is also the meeting with the actors of the present day and of the past (through interviews e.g.) in trade unions and employers' associations.

•  Labour relations in relation with decent wage/wage dispersion/gender wage gap

• Labour relations take (or not) in consideration the questions of decent wage and wage dispersion, often linked to qualification, responsibilities and type of company
• One of these dispersion issue is the gender wage gap. In recent years (from 1995), ILO or World Bank collected data, increasingly detailed and solid on this gender gap. But what are its causes and what is its long-term trend since 1950? The economic development trend appears to reduce the gender gap. In developing and emerging countries, the gender wage gap is important but seems to decrease over time and toward the higher skilled jobs. In advanced economies like France for example, the gender wage gap exceeds 40% in the 1950s, gradually decreasing to 30% in the 1970s and remains at 20% since the 1990s.