Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. None of these nations have an minimim hourly wage enshrined in law. Instead many of the base terms of employment, including wages, are decided via collective bargaining between sector trade unions and representatives of public sector and business interest organizations.
Minimum wage decided by politics is something taken for granted in many parts of the world, but ultimately it’s a question that most of all affects the suppliers (employees) and buyers (employers). The government will always be behind the times in legislation and have many other interests to juggle than yours - don’t just be a passive participant in the market.
I live in Sweden by the way, so feel free to ask me questions on the topic and I’ll do my best to answer.
Does/did (June this year) the new EU Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970) affect things?
What’s the EU Pay Transparency Directive?
Yes, what you would expect from the name, but just a tiny bit more than that as it deals with (indirectly) promotions and wage gaps too, companies need to incorporate & codify wages a bit further than just how much of a fight an individual worker gives up.
The basic thing is that every job position needs to have a wage specification.
Sounds like it could be useful
Not much that I know of aside from a bunch of extra bureaucracy. Unions already perform polls on wages amongst members, and that information is generally available to the union members. Furthermore, there’s often even information available about wages within an employer organization if it is large.
Oh, nice!
Such directives often take the best existing market practices & codifie them.
It’s mainly about gender pay equality, but the EU has been working on that for some decades now. They’re now basically shifting into next gear.
Apart from that, there’s going to be an immediately visible difference for all employees as the average pay of their colleagues as well as the expected development of their own pay will have to be made transparent to them. Also, it will be forbidden to ask for your current/ previous pay during job interviews.
The main thing I saw was categorisation of wages/positions, so if I have a worker that is exceeding the perquisites of the current position they get automatically promoted (eg from junior to senior position of the same job).
That, and that sem job description can’t differ more that 5% (or something like that) from the wages of others with abut the same job description.