Abstract
This report defines wages and salaries and describes them as money earned from human labor. Wages and salaries encompass all remuneration provided to workers for physical or mental activity, and they do not symbolize self-employment revenue. Total labor costs may include items like food or meeting spaces that are kept for the comfort of employees; therefore, they are not the same as pay and compensation expenditures. Wages and salaries typically include remuneration like vacations, breaks, sick leave, and peripheral perks and extras like retirement or employer-sponsored medical coverage. Incentives or deferred compensation can be awarded as additional remuneration, many of which are tied to the personal or average score. Wage theories concerning wages and salary have also been discussed in this paper, and some of the theories mentioned are subsistence theory and bargaining theory.
This report is about collective bargaining, which is a technique in which self-governing unions and employers negotiate terms and conditions of work, such as wage levels and working hours, and the parties’ relationships. The result is a collective bargaining agreement signed by all parties involved in the negotiations. Collective bargaining provides workers with labor protection, employers with legitimacy (of rules), and public authorities with a regulatory regime determined by the relevant stakeholders. Therefore, it can be customized to their circumstances while reinforcing adherence to quality standards. Collective bargaining among workers and employers placed above white wage levels, and other labor environments is vital in liberal democracies. This institution’s reach and impact differ over the timeframe and across continents.
Introduction
Employers are required by government labor laws to pay employees a basic wage and a bonus for extra hours completed. The Fair Labor Standards Act, a federal policy, establishes minimum compensation and exclusion designation for employees. Equivalent regulations exist in states and localities that guarantee a laborer’s right to possess a lawfully owing salary. Employees could use these regulations to bring a grievance against an employer for breaching their pay and wage rights (Steingold, 2021). The central issue in the accusations is that employers cannot pay overtime compensation to employees who work more than 40 hours on average weekly, as mandated by law. According to the US Department of Labor, almost 86 percent of US employment, or 115 million people, is eligible for extra pay (Losa & Zarauz, 2021). Only a few kinds of workers are excluded from the legislation: managers, specialists, and directors.
Salaries and other financial rewards for employees are unquestionably the “main course” of workplace negotiations collective agreements. They represent the worker’s current salary and mode of living and the possibility of economic progress, and the capacity to plan for retirement. Salaries are sometimes seen as the most essential and challenging subject in collective bargaining. When recently agreed contracts are publicly disclosed, the proportion of wage rise team members receive is frequently mentioned (Steingold, 2021). When workers decide to approve a memorandum of understanding, that may be the sole element they regard essential or an absolute must. They are fixated on “the number”—the deal’s percentage compensation rise. The core of collective bargaining is salaries and benefits. Many union workers are concerned about maintaining a particular living level and receiving suitable payback for their meaningful activity. At the same time, evaluations show that wages and benefits account for a significant proportion of the overall costs. Both sides debate a specific price or a pay scale for every task included in the contract using job evaluations, salary surveys, and other means.
Labor and management start talking by calculating sales, manufacturing expenses, operating expenses, and other relevant economic indicators used to compute the total cash available for bargained salary and bonus increases. As a result, executives can ensure that the company can sustain negotiated future operation costs. The federation can guarantee that its members get a fair portion of future revenues (Losa & Zarauz, 2021). When remunerations have been approved, bounce expenses are added to any projection. The computer has provided either administration or workforce with a negotiation tool to improve the speed and accuracy of proposal costing. Modifications in baseline hourly pay, COLAs, two respective structures, aggregates payouts, and profit-sharing schemes are all examples of bargained wages.
Wage Theories
Theories of wage setting and hypotheses on the contribution of the labor market to the total gross domestic product (GDP) have changed over time, shifting in conjunction with the evolving global economy. With its modern facilities, the capitalist economy could not have produced wages theory till the aristocracy was supplanted. The wage theories that have been used to explain include the subsistence theory, where the supply side of the labor market is emphasized, while the demand option is eliminated (Litwin & Shay, 2021). They assume that the critical parameter propelling pay increases to the subsistence economy is differences in the structure of employees. The Wealth of Nations incorporates lots of a subsistence theory, with Smith writing that employees’ salaries must be sufficient to permit them to survive and take care of their families. Following Smith, English mainstream economists like David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus were increasingly hostile.
The “natural price” of labor, according to Ricardo, is simply the price that allows laborers to survive and perpetuate the race. Ricardo’s statement was in line with the Malthusian theory of society, which stated that the community responds to the resources available to sustain it. Subsistence theorists argued that perhaps the competitiveness demand for labor would not depart from the optimal amount for an extended period: if wages rose above subsistence, the work grew, decreasing average earnings; if wages fell below subsistence, the workforce shrank, rising wage costs (Jayady et al., 2021). Just as contemporary economic experts wrote, most employees are staying at relative subsistence levels, and the community appeared to be seeking to surpass the ways of sustenance. Consequently, the subsistence theory seems to match the facts well. Although Ricardo claimed that the intrinsic value of labor was not set, the following authors were more pessimistic about wage earners’ possibilities.
Remuneration, durations, and employment conditions are decided by the negotiating capacity of the contract parties, according to the negotiating theory of wage levels. When Smith mentioned that owners had more bargaining leverage than employees, he hinted at such a view. Employers were better able to unite their hostility to co-employees, and they could also tolerate a financial loss for a greater length of time than laborers. John Davidson further refined this concept. He claimed inside The Bargain Theory of Salaries (1898) that determining wages is a highly complex process, including various forces that interact to determine the parties’ relative negotiating strength (Hernandez et al., 2019). This theory claims that wages are determined by multiple factors rather than a single element and that no single pay rate always wins.
Conclusion
Raising the minimum wage is an intelligent approach to improve payment in the lower portion of the economic ladder while possessing almost no impact on earnings and hourly rates. In a policy instrument, one strives for significant results cheaply. However, there is no evidence that substantial pay increases would have the same effect. We assume that substantial gains will substantially impact business implications almost nonexistent for intermediate increases. Still, there is little evidence in the United States since significant increases were not seen in the previous edition. Similarly, raising wages wasn’t the only measure that needed to be done in the U. S. to address low-income issues.
References
Hernandez, M., Avery, D. R., Volpone, S. D., & Kaiser, C. R. (2019). Bargaining while Black: The role of race in salary negotiations.Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(4), 581. Web.
Jayady, A., Subekti, P., Smyshlyaev, A. V., Protasova, O. N., & Artha, R. (2021). Salary scale and the diversity of wage systems.Linguistics and Culture Review, 5(S1), 293-302. Web.
Litwin, A. S., & Shay, O. (2021). What do unions do… for temps? Collective bargaining and the wage penalty. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society. Web.
Losa, E. L., & Zarauz, S. P. (2021). Spanish subsistence wages and the Little Divergence in Europe, 1500–1800. European Review of Economic History, 25(1), 59-84.
Steingold, F. S. (2021). The Employer’s Legal Handbook: How to Manage Your Employees & Workplace. Nolo.
Appendix
Example of how to calculate a costing wage proposal
Data
90 employees at $16.00/hr
60 employees at $13.00/hr
20 employees at $11.50/hr
Proposed wage increase = 6% across the board = 1,900 average number of production hours per year
Annual Cost
Current: 90 * $16.00 = $1,440
60 * 13.00 = 780
20 * 11.50 = 230
= $2,450/hr
Current annual cost is $2,450 * 1,900 hr = $4,655,000
Proposed: 90 * $16.96 = $1,526.40
60 * 13.78 = 826.80
20 * 12.19 = 243.80
=$2,597/hr
Proposed annual cost is $2.597 * 1,900 = $4,934,300
Total cost of proposed increase is $4,934,300 – $4,655,000 = $279,300
Cents per Hour
$16.96 – 16.00 = $0.96/hr for 90 employees
$13.78 – 13.00 = $0.78/hr for 60 employees
$12.19 – 11.50 = $0.69/hr for 20 employees
Roll-up (Average ÷ Employee)
Cost of benefits per person = $4.00/hr
$2,450 current cost ÷ 170 employees = $14.41 cost of wages/hr
$4.00 benefit cost ÷ $16.40 wages = 27.77% roll-up
Total Cost of Proposed Wage Rates ÷ Roll-up
$279,300.00 + 77,583.33 (27.77% * 279,300.00) = $356,883.33 wages + roll-up