Improving the position of low-wage workers through new coordinating institutions: The case of public hospitals

Abstract

© 2008 by Russell Sage Foundation. All rights reserved.This chapter explores the characteristics of low-wage work in the United Kingdom's public hospital sector (the National Health Service), which is the United Kingdom's largest employer, with a workforce of some 1.3 million. We focus on two target occupations, assistant nurses and cleaners. One in five assistant nurses and three in five cleaners are estimated to be paid below the low pay threshold. The quality of jobs for these workers is necessarily shaped by the changing financial and labor market pressures faced by hospital managers, much like the other private sector occupations addressed in this book. However, unlike the other examples of low-wage work, in this chapter we show how new "coordinating institutions" negotiated by the social partners (employers, unions, and government) to cover the entire public hospital sector also play a major role.

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