Deliberating Upon the Living Wage to Alleviate In-Work Poverty: A Rhetorical Inquiry Into Key Stakeholder Accounts

Abstract

Most developed nations have a statutory minimum wage set at levels insufficient to alleviate poverty. Increased calls for a living wage have generated considerable public controversy. This article draws on 25 interviews and four focus groups with employers, low-pay industry representatives, representatives of chambers of commerce, pay consultants, and unions. The core focus is on how participants use prominent narrative tropes for the living wage and against the living wage to argue their respective perspectives. We also document how both affirmative and negative tropes are often combined by participants to craft their own rhetorical positions on the issue.

Living wages in Portugal: In search of dignity in a polarised labour market

“…This kind of analysis is made in Grünberger et al (2021) for all EU countries, using EUROMOD simulations of alternative increases of the statutory minimum wages, but not considering the full implications of implementing a living wage policy, that may require a combination of minimum wage levels, income taxes and social transfers to guarantee income adequacy for different types of households to which the workers may belong to. The originality of the exploratory research presented in this article is that we focus on the main economic and social constraints faced by the design of a feasible and socially acceptable wage policy aimed at minimum adequate living conditions for the workers and their families and, like in other research studies (Hodgetts et al, 2022), single out the positions of the major social partners regarding such topics. The quantification of the impact of alternative scenarios on employment, budgetary costs, household income distribution and gender pay gap are, then, out of the scope at this stage of the research.…”