Study On Low Wage Problems From The Angle Of Industrial Relations

Industrial relations describe the right and obligation relations betweenemployers and employees during their working process. The theory aboutit is the core theory of Marxism political economics. The reasons to studythe problems of low wage from the angle of industrial relations can beconcluded as two aspects: First, long term unfair exchange between laborand capital under the dual economy system in our country, and high degreeincline in the game of labor and capital are important causes of low wage.Second, the relation between labor and capita] is "central relation"to understand all society relations in capitalism production, as pointedout by Engels. Through the theory of traditional capitalism industrialrelation to realize contemporary market economy is very helpful to analyzethe complex society relations in the market economy and to realize theessence of capital employing labor of market economy. Moreover, quicklychanged science and technology after World WarⅡhas improved capitalismproductivity largely and changed deeply the society construction. The newcharacters of contemporary capitalism differing from traditionalcapitalism are influencing and changing the industrial relation.Utilizing the theories of Marxism industrial relation, western mainstreameconomics industrial relation and the practice of contemporary industrialrelation, this thesis describes the situation of low wage in our country,analyzes the forming reasons of low wage and benefit distribution behindlow wage. Also, economics significance to raise wage is discussed fromthe theoretical and empirical angles.The content of this thesis can be divided into 5 parts:Part one: low wage situations are fully described from five aspects: bythe comparison between the increasing speed of wage and productivity; bythe ratio of the wage summation in GDP; by the ratio of consumption inGDP; by the comparison of the change of labor cost per unit between China and America and by increasing of the number of cases of labor argument.Part two analyzes the variety forming reasons of low wage: The long termunfair exchange between capital labor that arises from the policy of lowprice of production elements in agriculture and low wage of urban laboris the most important reason. The wage raising speed is delayed by exportoriented economy growing mode based on so called "relative advantage"Surplus labor market and nominal labor union make the game of capital andlabor more incline. Part three analyzes the benefit distribution behindlow wage: low price labor cost can only get limited and weak relative costadvantage. The competition ability in international market which rely onscarifying national welfare and natural resource is non persistent.According to theory, the Emanuel thesis analyzes that low wage can makethis unfair exchange worse, capital flow and international productdividing can counteract economy growing of developing countries, andlabor value transfer exist from low wage countries to high wage countriesin the procedure ofinternational exchange. Besides, the labor-intensiveproducts with low wage will cause trade conflict in international tradeand hinder the update of industrial construction and technologyimprovement of enterprises. Part four analyzes the influences of raisingwage to economy of our country: raising wage has effect to FDI; raisingwage has positive effects on domestic demand, improving labor quality,for building our creative country and releasing the appreciation pressureof our currency. Part five: The thesis verifies the effect that raisingwage can improve productivity under the certain condition of labor marketby data of wage and productivity in secondary industry and constructindustry from 1978-2002. This result also reveals that raising wage ofindustrial workers is one of the approaches to improve harmoniousness ofindustrial relations.