Minmum wages in Central and Eastern Europe: From protection to destitution (1995), by D. Vaughan-Whitehead and G. Standing (eds.)
Since the late 1980s, incomes have fallen sharply in most countries in Central and Eastern Europe, with unemployment and poverty rates rising dramatically. The statutory minimum wage was intended to act as an anchor of the social protection system in these countries, shielding the low-paid and those dependent on state benefits. Unfortunately, in recent years the minimum wage has dropped well below the subsistence level and has effectively ceased to offer any protection to those in need, becoming instead a means of impoverishment and destitiution.

The ILO's Central and Eastern European Team conducted a series of studies concerning the role of minimum wages in the countries of this rapidly transforming region, in particular looking at ways in which this role should be revised. Based on this research, this publication examines the most crucial issues in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania and the Russian Federation, and compares their systems with those of western industrialized economies. Bringing together primary data so far unknown beyond a small circle of policy-makers and officials, the contributors consider the evidence and the implications of new developments and recommend a series of reforms.