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The form and dynamic of wages and salaries are crucial to the shaping of industrial societies. Wage relations are regulated by states both to benefit their economies and to achieve a specific form of freedom, equity and justice. Though there are signs of a common dynamic, wage relations throughout Europe present a bewildering diversity and wage bargaining at European level remains virtually non-existent. Wages were recognized as an issue of concern by the Social Charter but the European Union has shunned direct interference. This book is intended to inform and intensify debate on wage relations in Europe. It focuses on three aspects: the state and the regulation of wages; wage forms, the reproduction of labour and living standards; and competition, the market and changes in work organization. In papers and discussion by a range of leading experts from eastern and western Europe, rehearsed initially at a symposium supported by the European Commission, entrenched orthodoxies are challenged and new approaches proposed. Should social protection be integrated into the wage system? Are wages best determined according to the quality, quantity or value of the input or the output of labour? How do wage relations reinforce inequalities and social divisions, especially gender divisions, and exclude sections of society? Have flexibility in the labour market and unregulated competition adversely affected firms’ productivity and the organization of work and pay? These and many related questions are addressed in this wide-ranging text.
