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Wage Structures and Wage Comparisons “Fair pay” is generally regarded as one of the main objectives of wage and salary administration in organisations. It is also becoming more widely appreciated that government incomes policies are unlikely to succeed until they can alter the anomalies and distortions which exist between the wages of different occupations or sectors of employment. If organisations or governments are to move in the direction of fairer pay then they must understand wage structures and the wage comparisons which such structures give rise to. The purpose of this paper is to describe a set of methods for aiding this task. Without methods of analysing complex wage structures, organisations and governments lack the capability of moving in the direction of fairer pay. This paper is therefore about the establishment of a capability for policy making, and the concluding section will briefly suggest how policy might be improved with the aid of this capability.

This paper aims to present a theoretical framework which reveals the relationship between job evaluation (JE) and the development of fair wage structure from the organizational justice (OJ) perspective. It focuses on analyzing the dimensions of job-based pay structure and the use of multifaceted construct of OJ (procedures, distribution and interaction) to determine how the perceived justice of JE's multi-levels construct contributes to achieve the fairness of wage structure.

This paper adopts an analytical descriptive approach in terms of explaining the perspectives and viewpoints related to the analysis. This paper is based on examining a theoretical framework provided by the authors based on a theoretical review of literature and a set of empirical evidences.

The design of a hierarchical wage structure counts on the multidimensional approach of JE which consists of three dimensions (processes, outcomes and social system). In addition, the determination of wage structure fairness is dependent on the assessment of the perceived justice of: JE's procedures, wages distribution and management's treatment with its employees.

This study provides a new theoretical contribution in studying the relationship between JE and the design of fair wage structure. This contribution can be regarded as a theoretical foundation for conducting some empirical and comparative studies in the future. The study affords directive mechanisms to policymakers in order to enhance the fairness of the wage structure across the state.

I. INTRODUCTION In this monograph we point out and analyse various dimensions of bargaining structure, which we define broadly as the institutional configuration within which bargaining takes place, and attempt to provide some guidelines for management action. We look at the development, theory, and present framework of bargaining structure in Britain and then examine it in terms of choices: multi‐employer versus single employer, company versus plant level bargaining, and the various public policy issues involved.

The purpose of this article is to present some observations on the distinctive characteristics of wage structure in France. These observations will be set out in two parts. Firstly, the changing pattern of wage structure in French industry during recent years will be examined. Secondly, comparisons will be made between the structure of wages in France and in the four major countries of the Common Market prior to its enlargement. The objective is to discover how far recent changes in the French situation and possibly in that of the other countries have either tended to produce a convergence between their pay structures or, on the other hand, have reinforced international differences.

Analyzes the wage structure and wage distribution for male and female Polish workers during a more mature phase of a transition to a market economy, namely 1994‐2001. The results indicate an overall rise in earnings inequality for both genders during this period. Contrary to conventional expectations, changes in the composition of employment caused by a deep restructuring process did not have a significant impact on earnings inequality. Throughout this period, the changes in the wage structure and wage distribution were almost entirely due to the changes in returns to worker characteristics. However, does not observe the “explosion of differentials at all levels,” predicted by many leading models on transition. Wage structures for men and women evolved in different ways. This analysis suggests that the effect of changes in labor supply and institutional factors on the wage structure and wage distribution was relatively unimportant. Demand side factors seem to be far more important in explaining the dynamics of earnings inequality in Poland during 1994‐2001.

Between 1995 and 2012, the wage distribution of male workers in Brazil shifted to the right and became less dispersed. This paper attempts to identify the reasons for that movement in male wage distribution, focusing on the impact of education expansion on wage distribution. The Oaxaca-Blinder (OB) and Recentered Influence Function (RIF) decomposition results show that both changes in returns on skills and upgrades in the composition of work skills contribute to increases in the average wage and wages at the 10th and 50th percentiles. The shifts in returns to skills had a decreasing impact on wages at the 90th percentile and are identified as the primary force reducing wage inequality. Education expansion had an equalizing impact on wage distribution, primarily through the decline in return to education.

Those who would become economists today have the choice of two ideologies, the one maintaining that the inner laws of the capitalist system are equilibrating and maximizing; the other, that they doom that system to self‐destruction. In the natural sciences, a theory is ‘a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts.’ (Third definition in the Shorter OED.) By contrast, in economics it is used, ‘In loose or general sense: A hypothesis proposed as an explanation; hence, a mere hypothesis, speculation, conjecture; an idea or set of ideas about something …’ (OED fifth definition).

We examine the cardinal gap between wage distributions of the incumbents and newly hired workers based on entropic distances which are well-defined welfare theoretic measures. Decomposition of several effects is achieved by identifying several counterfactual distributions of different groups. These go beyond the usual Oaxaca–Blinder decompositions at the (linear) conditional means. Much like quantiles, these entropic distances are well-defined inferential objects and functions whose statistical properties have recently been developed. Going beyond these strong rankings and distances, we consider weak uniform ranking of these wage outcomes based on statistical tests for stochastic dominance. The empirical analysis is focused on employees with at least 35 hours of work in the 1996–2012 monthly Current Population Survey (CPS). Among others, we find incumbent workers enjoy a better distribution of wages, but the attribution of the gap to wage inequality and human capital characteristics varies between quantiles. For instance, highly paid new workers are mainly due to human capital components, and in some years, even better wage structure.

The paper aims to link product market features in the Greek metal processing sector to the wage-setting practices followed therein.

Aggregate business structural statistics are used to document the product market structure features while information from a rich sectoral collective agreement database, covering a number of sectors of the Greek economy, is used for the wage-setting practices. The approach is, in general, descriptive and discursive with the use of some regression analysis.

The main findings of the paper include: first, the metal sector as a whole is heterogeneous in terms of its structural/productive features; second, the type of collective agreements followed in the subsectors of the metal sector appear related to the structural features of the subsectors; third, negotiated wages appear binding for subsectors facing less product market competition; and finally, the ability to opt out of the sectoral agreement and sign firm-level agreements during the recent crisis in Greece was used mainly by firms suffering accounting losses.

The research results are limited by the absence of detailed firm-level information both on the actual wages paid and on the exact industrial relations practices in the workplace.

In view of the changes taking place in industrial relations in general and collective bargaining in particular, the issue of the homogeneity – in terms of structure and performance – of individual sectors, sets the question of whether one size (agreement) fits all and consequently whether extensions of agreements to whole sectors are advisable. This is the spirit in which the paper is written. The originality is linked both to the issue addressed but also to the use of the detailed collective labour agreements information and its association with product market features.