ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the extent of low pay, the various aspects of social security designed directly or indirectly to help the low paid. It looks briefly at the question of equality of incomes in society. Low pay, like poverty, is a relative concept in the sense that they both have to be seen in relation to the standards prevailing at a given time in society. The controversy surrounding the merits, dilemmas and problems of a system of a national minimum wage is a good example of the crisis in values of an industrial society where profit is the reigning goal of industrial activity. The rejection of a national minimum wage and the adoption of a family income supplement scheme stems from the government's ideological commitment to the relief of subsistence poverty rather than to the promotion of social policies designed to reduce income inequality in society.