The Living Wage

10 Are collective bargaining models in the Nordic countries able to secure a living wage?Experiences from low-wage industries

Kristin Alsos and Kristine Nergaard

Introduction

Discussions on and calls for a living wage have particularly emerged in countries and regions where minimum-wage levels are too low to ensure a decent minimum standard of living (Schulten and Müller, 2019). While the purpose of the minimum wage, as defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO), has been to meet the needs of workers and their families (Alsos et al., 2019), it can be argued that this ambition has been abandoned, triggering calls for a living wage (Schulten and Müller, 2017). In the Nordic countries, there have been no such campaigns, and wage ...