To the Lighthouse - towards a global minimum wage: building on the international poverty line

This article outlines how a global minimum wage might be introduced having regard to the political, institutional, and technical barriers in its way. It reviews the issues surrounding minimum wages in the context of globalisation, and assesses the evolution of labour standards in developing countries with a view to their application to a new minimum wages regime. The proposed global minimum wage rests on four pillars: (i) the World Bank’s international poverty line recalculated as a universal wage floor; (ii) an electronic lighthouse that provides the global minimum wage translated for each developing country, and for the informal sector; (iii) involvement of the widest range of stakeholders; and (iv) commercialisation of its monitoring and remediation. The International Labour Organisation–World Bank ‘Better Work’ program is discussed as an example of how its governance might proceed.