The following summary of the article came from the UALEINDIV mailing list. See the attachment for the article.

*"Global trends since the economic crisis have shown a general decrease in real wage growth. In this week’s column, Patrick Belser argues that there has been a long-term convergence in wages throughout the world, notwithstanding this decrease. *

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*"This convergence has been driven by the simultaneous stagnation of wage growth in the developed countries and the faster growth of wages in the developing regions. Belser argues that the uneven growth of real wages in developed regions exacerbates the low wage problem and leads to increased inequality in those regions.*

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* "As the most adversely affected people are at the bottom of the wage distribution, Belser argues for minimum wage policies to support those workers who receive low pay.*

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*"Patrick Belser is the principal editor of the ILO Global Wage Report. Before working on wages, he spent 5 years with the ILO programme on fundamental principles and rights at work and co-edited a book called **Forced Labor: Coercion and Exploitation in the Private Economy, published in 2009 by Lynne Rienner. *

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