ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the discourses related to minimum wage setting in three Latin American countries–Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay–representing three different post-dictatorship industrial relations systems. The role of the minimum wage in wage inequality mitigation closely interacts with the need to improve incomes among workers in the informal economy in all three countries. The chapter focuses on the role of the state in the minimum wage setting procedure, and the influence that unions and employers developed in minimum wage setting through collective bargaining at the sector level. The growing governmental power can be partly explained by broader economic policies, such as the dollarisation of the economy in Argentina and fighting fierce inflation, of which the minimum wage setting policy is crucial. The chapter also focuses on the changing strategies of the state, unions and employers' vis-a-vis the minimum wage policy in the shifting economic and political context during the period 2003–2019, characterised by economic transition, instability and growing wage inequalities.
