Regulation of working conditions is necessary to ensure that employees are not exploited and to provide them with some economic security.
Economic regulations may include some safeguards to protect employees, as socio-economic rights:
· Most countries operate a minimum wage policy (3.3.3.3).
· Health and safety regulations protect employees from harm, as described above (3.3.1.3).
· Working hours are part of the regulation of working conditions. The EU, for example, sets minimum Working Conditions which include “provisions on working time, part-time, and fixed-term work, temporary workers, and the posting of workers”; this prevents member states from competing with ‘a race to the bottom’ at the expense of employees.
· Employees need some economic security. They should be entitled to a period of notice before terminating employment, for example, and they may also be entitled to redundancy payments.
These regulations all impose a cost upon employers, so they affect the operation of the labour market.
(This is an archive of a page intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. The latest versions are at book contents).