A New Focus for Left-Wing Parties: the Politics of Low-Wage Work in Western Democracies

Fight for 15$, Living wage movements, fast-food strikes; low wages have become a major issue for social movements in the last few years. These movements follow decades of labour market deregulation and neoliberalism, where governments have encouraged the creation of low-paid and unskilled jobs in the service sector. The impact of those mobilizations and of this growing category of workers on partisan politics has, however, rarely been studied in political science. The issue of low wages offers an opportunity for left-wing parties to consolidate their vote among low-wage workers and among electors in favor of redistribution without increasing taxation on the middle class. Indeed, policies targeted towards low-wage workers such as minimum wage and targeted cash transfers allow left-wing parties to present themselves as champions of workers and redistribution at a relative low cost. We thus postulate that left-wing parties tend to put more emphasis on the issue of low wages than right-wing parties in electoral campaigns, especially in recent years. We also postulate that this relation is stronger in countries with a weak bargaining process such as the United States and the United Kingdom, because social partners are unable to reduce inequalities between workers, thus putting more pressure on left-wing parties. To study the position of political parties on the issue of low wages, we use electoral manifestos available through the Comparative Manifesto Project. The data of 15 western democracies from 1990 to 2018 are analyzed with advanced quantitative methods.