{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.021486123545210387, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0035810205908683975, 'mean_word_length': 5.142857142857143, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Wages, Salary, and Remuneration—Towards a Social Wage

This chapter traces the development of minimum wage legislation through the early to mid-twentieth century. It demonstrates the significance of the concept of ‘remuneration’ in shaping the legal environment in which workers’ right to payment was coming to be conceived. The first section begins with a discussion of this concept, tracing it from its origins in the concept of the salary. The second section builds on this analysis to explore the role of these concepts—the wage, the salary, and remuneration—in experiments in wage regulation. The third section explores the link between these different concepts and the emerging relational model of the contract of employment. The fourth section shows how these changes influenced the way in which minimum wage legislation came to be conceived in the mid-twentieth century, particularly in the context of the wages councils system of the 1940s. The fifth section then explores the broader implications of these changes, returning to the example of dock work and the various ‘decasualization’ policies of the era.