‘Worth So Appallingly Little’: A Workplace‐Level Analysis of Low Pay

Using Britain’s 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, this paper investigates the characteristics of establishments paying low wages immediately prior to the introduction of the UK’s National Minimum Wage in April 1999. It demonstrates that a range of personal, oragnizational and environmental factors are related to the incidence of low pay. These relationships are more complex than previously suggested. In particular, that between establishment size and low pay is moderated by whether the establishment is part of a larger organization; the incidence of low pay is high in single establishments and low in small establishments that are part of large organizations.