1. Revenue comparisons require the use of time units.
Investment income is compared with each other over periods of the same duration. The same is true of income from work between them.
2. The period over which all labor incomes are most exactly comparable with each other is the hour.
All wages are in exchange for workTravail_Ouvrage, but all work that can be exchanged for wages is obtained by means of labor time – time devoted by the worker to this work. This has the effect of leading to the de facto existence of hourly wages, some of which are effective and others maximum (see below).
3. The hour of work is a unit of work and not the work itself.
This applies to all human work, whether or not the person who does it derives an income from it.
4. Hourly wages are for some effective.
A case of effective hourly wage is one for which pay slips are established on the basis of a variable number of hours worked. Another case of effective hourly wage is the one for which pay slips are established on the basis of a monthly lump sum, in return for an effective working time to which the employee and the employer adhere. The effective hourly wage is then equal to the lump sum divided by the working time.
5. Hourly wages are for other maximums.
In other cases, the wage shown on the payslips is also a lump sum, but with a minimum working time. The maximum hourly wage is then equal to the lump sum divided by the minimum duration.
6. It is frequently by annual quantities that hourly wages are most accurately calculated.
A thirteenth month or more, an annual or half-yearly profit-sharing scheme, as well as bonuses, make the gross monthly wage (including employer contributions as long as there are any) an incomplete numerator for calculating the hourly wage.
7. The difference between gross and net wages disappears when the contributions that constituted it are deducted from the employee's current account.
This solution is no longer administratively impracticable, although it can probably only be implemented in stages.
8. The publication of hourly wages and the coefficients of the difference between them improves the functioning of the labor market.
The hourly wage gap coefficientsWage_Horaire, both effective and maximum, which are most suitable for the uses that can be made of them are those based on the statutory minimum hourly wage. Their publicity, together with that of hourly wages, improves the functioning of the labor market for the simple reason that negotiations and other debates on wages take place with better knowledge of the facts.
9. A statutory minimum hourly wage benchmarks the comparison of wages.
This consideration would be sufficient if it were the only one in favor of the establishment, country by country, of a legal minimum hourly wage. But this minimum does not play its benchmark function well when only the lowest wages are expressed by the hour.
10. The following proposal draws attention to the fact that hourly wage differentials regulate the distribution of total labor income.
This economic law, which is one of the most fundamental, reinforces the need for a legal minimum hourly wage. Country by country, society wants to see a change or a maintenance of the gap between the highest and lowest wages. Depending on what happens, the increase in the minimum wage becomes a ceiling, a floor or a standard of increase for the mass of other labor remuneration.