Agenda-setting as a trade union strategy: the case of the minimum wage in the Netherlands

Abstract

German

French

When political issues remain under the radar, politicians can lend their ears to lobbyists rather than the electorate, without being held accountable in elections. In such a situation, one potential strategy for trade unions and other organisations is to boost the visibility of these issues in the media, so that voters can take them into account when deciding who to vote for. This article proposes a method for exploring the feasibility of such a strategy. The minimum wage campaign conducted by the Netherlands Trade Union Confederation (FNV), which resulted in an 8–20 per cent increase in the minimum wage, is discussed as a case study. It is shown that the outcomes of the campaign are largely consistent with expectations based on the feasibility study conducted before it was launched. It is also argued that while other factors may have contributed to the outcome, they cannot explain the timing and nature of the political and media response.

Keywords

Minimum wage agenda-setting trade unions The Netherlands

Introduction

Culpepper (2010) makes a distinction between ‘quiet’ and ‘noisy’ politics. When quiet politics are the order of the day, issues are masked from public view and businesses can successfully pursue their interests through behind-the-scenes lobbying. This changes when issues become ‘noisy’ and appear in the media: when the public starts to pay attention to issues, political parties have an electoral incentive to heed what the voters want. This suggests that a potential strategy for trade unions and other organisations is to try to set the public agenda, raising the visibility of an issue via the media and other channels, so that voters can take it into account when deciding who to vote for. One effect of this may be that voters switch to political parties that support the campaign goal. Another effect may be that parties that initially did not support the campaign goal, but which might lose votes as a result, try to pre-empt this by getting behind the campaign goal after all. Both eventualities may harness support in Parliament.

This article proposes a method of exploring the feasibility of such a strategy. The minimum wage campaign of the Dutch trade union FNV (in which the author was involved as a researcher) will be discussed as a case study. It will be shown that the outcomes of this campaign have been largely consistent with the results of a feasibility study carried out before the campaign’s launch. Furthermore, it will be argued that alternative explanations (growth of low-paid jobs, the COVID-19 pandemic and inflation) cannot explain the timing of the political and media response, nor the fact that the minimum wage was chosen as an instrument.

The structure of this article is as follows. The ‘Theory’ section discusses the literature on agenda-setting (and voting decisions) and argues how it may lead to increased political support. The ‘Method’ section explains how the feasibility study and the case study were implemented. The case study is then presented. The concluding section discusses whether campaign outcomes have been consistent with the conclusions of the feasibility study, and whether alternative explanations could account for these outcomes.

Theory

It has been shown for a number of countries that government decision-making is more responsive to the interests of high-income citizens than to those of middle- and low-income ones (Mathisen et al., 2023). This raises the question of how politicians are able to disregard the preferences of large groups of voters without being voted out of office. Weaver has argued that politicians have strategies at their disposal to prevent voters from holding them to account on specific issues. The preferred strategy is to keep these issues off the political agenda so that they will not be a factor in voting decisions. Other strategies include redefining the issue, limiting discretion in decision-making, or ‘passing the buck’ (Weaver, 1986).

One example is raising the minimum wage, which in many countries has broad support among voters (Cova, 2023; Mabbett, 2023; Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, 2023). Mabbett (2023) has studied minimum wage commissions in the United Kingdom and Germany, finding that they keep minimum wage levels out of the political arena: ‘Generally, they produce decisions through consensus (or behind-the-scenes compromise), which serve to pre-empt party-political engagement and relieve governments from the task of navigating a path between economic constraints (however perceived) and responsiveness to public opinion.’¹ In Weaver’s classification, minimum wage commissions might be considered an instance of ‘passing the buck’.

The question here is not whether certain types of institutions have an inherently upward or downward effect on minimum wages. The point is more general: when a topic has flown under the radar, political actors are less likely to be held accountable by voters, which allows them to heed lobby groups rather than the electorate (Røed, 2023).² This suggests that raising the visibility (‘salience’) of an issue may be an effective campaign strategy.

Studies on agenda-setting argue that interest groups may try either to get issues onto the political agenda, or to prevent this from happening (Bachrach and Baratz, 1962). A distinction can be drawn between ‘inside lobbying’ or contacting decision-makers directly, and ‘outside’ or public strategies that aim to mobilise the broader public (Dür and Mateo, 2013). Public agenda-setting strategies will normally work only in relation to goals that have broad support among voters; otherwise they run the risk of mobilising not just supporters but also opponents.³ They differ from inside lobbying in this respect. Lobbying often takes place behind closed doors and may be used to advance interests that do not have broad support, as is frequently the case with the lobbying efforts of business associations (Flöthe and Rasmussen, 2019).

Indeed, studies have shown that organisations representing the interests of a specific group are more likely to use inside lobbying, whereas organisations representing broader interests are more likely to use public agenda-setting strategies (Flöthe and Rasmussen, 2019). Trade unions do not easily fit in this scheme, because they represent both the interests of specific groups of workers, and broader interests (Voncken and Otjes, 2024). The FNV campaign discussed below is an example of a campaign with a strong emphasis on public agenda-setting.

Note that public support can never be taken for granted. Counter-mobilisation may reduce support for an issue (Soule and Olzak, 2004), for example, by using the ‘rhetoric of fear’. For instance, Swiss business associations undermined public support for an inheritance tax by framing it as a ‘small and medium-sized business-killer’ (Mach et al., 2021).

Interest groups, including unions, cannot just issue a press release and expect it to be picked up by the media (Binderkrantz et al., 2023). The more complex an issue is, the more difficult it will be to raise its visibility (Culpepper, 2010). Factors that may help increase public awareness of an issue and force politicians to pay attention include crises and scandals, efforts of political entrepreneurs (Culpepper, 2010), protests (Agnone, 2007), and political strikes (Hamann et al., 2016). While crises attract public attention, their effect on the political agenda depends on their framing as problems that require government intervention (Niedhardt Capella, 2016).

It has been argued that citizens’ organisations are more likely to achieve policy change when their issue is picked up by other organisations, causing ‘cascade effects’ (Baumgartner, 2010; Chaqués-Bonafont, 2016). By tracing when issues get picked up by different actors, one can measure ‘streams of influence’ (Green-Pedersen and Walgrave, 2014).

One important question is whether people’s voting intentions change when an issue becomes salient. Voting has become increasingly volatile, but this does not mean that voting decisions are random. Voters may switch between parties, but generally only between parties that are consistent with their views. Indeed, voting decisions can be thought of as a two-step process. First, voters form a ‘consideration set’ (sometimes called choice set or party set) of parties they might consider voting for. Second, they decide which party from that consideration set will get their vote (Oscarsson and Rosema, 2019).

Consideration sets are based on voters’ ‘values’ or ‘ideology’ (Karlsen and Aardal, 2016). Because they tend to be fairly stable, consideration sets generally change little over time (Rekker and Rosema, 2019). By contrast, a range of less stable factors may play a role when voters come to decide which party from the consideration set to vote for: which issues are on the public agenda; which parties voters trust on those issues; do parties and their leaders appear capable and so on (Geers and Bos, 2017). As a result, party choice is less stable than consideration sets are (Rekker and Rosema, 2019).

Vote-switching is most likely to occur in a multi-party system, between parties that are relatively close to each other ideologically. In two-party systems such as the one in the United States, it is less likely that large numbers of voters will switch parties (Oscarsson and Rosema, 2019). In such a situation, unions may prefer strategies that do not require voters to switch from one party to another. For example, they may try to raise voter turnout among segments of the population that are considered likely to vote for a party that promotes workers’ rights (see, for example, Service Employees International Union, 2024). Another option is trying to achieve policy change through referendums (for example, Juravich, 2017).

The goal of the type of strategy under discussion here is not to convince people to vote for a particular party, but to raise the visibility of an issue, so that voters can take it into account when deciding who to vote for. The distinction is important. If you ask voters to vote for party A because it supports a higher minimum wage, then party B will have little incentive to change its position and also support this goal. If you raise the salience of the minimum wage and it turns out to be a relevant issue for a large group of voters, however, then party B may choose also to support a higher minimum wage so as not to risk losing votes.

One illustration is the campaign for the introduction of a minimum wage run by the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB, 2014) and some of its affiliates between 2002 and 2014. The position of the unions was a key reason behind the SPD’s decision to support the minimum wage in Germany (Meyer, 2016), but they also faced electoral competition from the left-wing socialist Die Linke (Zohlnhöfer and Engler, 2014). Subsequently, the CDU-CSU became more supportive of a minimum wage because it wanted to prevent left-wing parties from mobilising the issue (Dostal, 2012). When the CDU-CSU and the SPD formed a government, the coalition agreement included the introduction of a minimum wage, which the SPD had made a non-negotiable condition for participating in the government (Degen, 2022).

It can be argued that agenda-setting may lead to increased support in Parliament through at least three mechanisms. First, voters may switch to a party that supports the campaign goal, which will change the composition of Parliament. Second, parties that do not support the campaign goal may anticipate that they may lose votes as a result of the first mechanism. To prevent this, they may decide to change their position and support the campaign goal as well. Third, the issue may become so important for a party that it will try to obtain concessions from other parties in negotiations on forming a coalition government. The second and third mechanisms appear to have been at work in the German case.

It can be argued further that these mechanisms may have purchase only when there are parties that support the campaign goal (or can be convinced to do so) in the first place, because otherwise, voters do not have a party they can switch to. The third mechanism may come into play when the campaign goal is very important to voters or members of a specific party. Party activists may then use internal decision-making channels to make this issue a priority for the party.

Method

This article presents a case study of the FNV’s minimum wage campaign and its effects on public and political debate and decision-making, using media reports and Parliamentary records, among other things. It also presents the results of a feasibility study that was conducted prior to the launch of the campaign. Note that the goal of this analysis was not to predict outcomes, but to explore possible scenarios. Media reports were used to determine when raising the minimum wage became a topic of public debate. The online archives of national newspapers NRC, Trouw and Volkskrant were searched for articles containing the term ‘minimumloon’ (minimum wage). It was determined whether these articles mention actors arguing for a higher minimum wage.

In order to explore which policy measures Members of Parliament proposed to address poverty and purchasing power, Lower House amendments containing the terms ‘armoede’ (poverty) or ‘koopkracht’ (purchasing power) were analysed. Party positions on raising the minimum wage were analysed using Lower House votes on motions and amendments, and party manifestos for the 2021 election. All analyses are limited to proposals regarding the European part of the Netherlands.

The feasibility study focused on the first two mechanisms for increasing support in Parliament, and used data from the 2017 wave of the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study (DPES).⁴ Support for government measures to reduce income inequality was used as a proxy for support for a higher minimum wage.⁵

Table 1 lists the largest parties represented in the Lower House after the 2017 election. An educated guess was made that the SP, PvdA, 50PLUS and GroenLinks might support a higher minimum wage. Respondents were classified as potential switchers if they had not voted for SP, PvdA, 50PLUS or GroenLinks in 2017, but had at least one of these parties in their consideration set⁶ and agreed that the government should take measures to reduce income inequality. The rationale is that these are voters who might plausibly switch from a party that does not support a higher minimum wage to one that does.

Table 1.

Largest political parties, as of March 2017.

Party	Orientation	Seats in Lower House
50PLUS	Senior citizens	4
CDA*	Christian democrat	19
ChristenUnie*	Christian	5
D66*	Social-liberal	19
GroenLinks	Green	14
PvdA	Social democrat	9
PVV	Right-wing populist	20
PvdD	Animal rights	5
SP	Socialist	14
VVD*	Conservative-liberal	33

Note: *Part of the government coalition.

Source: Kiesraad.

The maximum effect of the first mechanism (changing the composition of Parliament) can be estimated as the percentage of potential switchers among all people who voted in the previous election. The likelihood that a party will change its position to avert vote losses (the second mechanism) can be explored by calculating the percentage of potential switchers among its voters. Parties that have a substantial percentage of potential switchers among their voters may have an incentive to change their position if the minimum wage turns out to be a relevant issue for voters.

Note that this is a simplified model. For example, by changing their position, parties may not only avert vote losses, but also gain new voters (including, perhaps, people who abstained in the previous election). On the other hand, supporting a higher minimum wage may drive away a small number of voters who oppose this. Importantly, secondary effects may occur: once a party changes its position, this may increase electoral competition for parties that have not made that decision yet.⁷

The merits of the feasibility study and the underlying assumptions will be discussed by asking (i) whether it is likely that the agenda-setting campaign contributed to the observed outcomes, and (ii) whether those outcomes are consistent with the results of the feasibility study.

Case study: FNV’s minimum wage campaign

Various trade unions in Europe have launched campaigns to put the minimum wage on the agenda.⁸ In 2018, Dutch trade union FNV launched the Voor 14 (now Voor 16) campaign, aiming to have the statutory minimum wage raised to 60 per cent of the median wage (this level has also been proposed as a reference value in the European Directive on minimum wages). This was operationalised as €14 per hour by 2022, since updated to €16 per hour by 2024. The demand amounted to an above-indexation increase of the minimum wage of about 30 per cent.

One of the campaign goals was to get the minimum wage onto the political agenda by 2020, so that parties would be forced to take a position on this issue in their manifestos for the March 2021 election. The campaign is ongoing. The current analysis focuses on the first part of the campaign, broadly until the March 2021 election, although results that materialised later will also be considered.

Minimum wage in the Netherlands

When the Dutch statutory minimum wage was established in 1969, it was intended to follow economic growth. To achieve this, indexation was based on average wage growth in collective agreements. Subsequently, the level of a number of benefits, including the state pension, was linked to the minimum wage (Salverda, 2023). This implies that raising the minimum wage not only has consequences for employers’ wage bill, but also for government expenditure on social security.

The indexation method for the minimum wage has not had the intended effect, however. In 1969 the minimum wage corresponded to 66 per cent of the median wage, but this had fallen to 47 per cent by 2019.⁹ One reason is that collective agreements do not fully reflect wage growth. Another reason is that indexation has been suspended a number of times, and on one occasion the minimum wage was actually cut (Salverda, 2023).

Until recently, the Dutch minimum wage was set on a monthly basis. As the number of hours worked during a normal working week varies by sector (for example, 36 or 40 hours), the minimum wage per hour also varied by sector. This implies that introducing a uniform hourly minimum wage would affect different sectors differently. Between 2009 and 2018, job growth in the Netherlands consisted largely of jobs paying just above the minimum wage, perhaps because the trade unions lost bargaining power. The role of the minimum wage as a wage floor has thus become more important (Been et al., 2021).

Keeping the minimum wage off the agenda

There is broad support among Dutch voters for increasing the minimum wage (Driessen and Kanne, 2020; Totta, 2019). However, government decisions reflect mainly the preferences of high-income and highly educated voters (Schakel, 2021; Schakel and Van Der Pas, 2021) and there are indications that corporations have easier access to decision-makers than other groups (Aizenberg and Hanegraaff, 2020; Juffer, 2022).

The level of the minimum wage has long remained off the political agenda. In their analysis of Dutch political culture, Otjes and Louwerse (2023) argue that political issues are ‘defused’ by redefining them as technical matters that should be left to specialists: ‘One can reduce questions of economic justice, for instance about the fair distribution of income, to issues of economic science.’

This also applies to minimum wage setting. The Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), an independent government agency, plays an important role. Mainstream political parties submit their national election manifestos for analysis by the CPB, which uses economic models to predict effects on unemployment, the budget deficit and income distribution, among other things. These models are built on the assumption that raising the minimum wage will have negative effects on employment and the budget deficit (CPB, 2017). A negative evaluation by the CPB may harm a party in an election campaign, which makes it politically risky to include a higher minimum wage in election manifestos (see Been, 2021).

The assumptions used by the CPB are subject to debate. The FNV has pointed to a growing body of empirical research that finds that raising the minimum wage does not have a substantial effect on employment (Koopmans, 2019). Indeed, after questions were asked in Parliament,¹⁰ the CPB updated its analysis, now concluding that the effect of a higher minimum wage on employment is probably much smaller than it had previously assumed (Paans and Van Sonsbeek, 2020). The CPB has since become more supportive of a higher minimum wage.

In the Netherlands, income issues are often redefined as issues concerning the purchasing power of specific groups, best addressed with targeted measures. Because of their assumed efficiency, the CPB evaluates such targeted measures more positively than minimum wage increases (De Horde, 2023). They are complex to administer, however, overhead costs are high and take-up is often low (Olsthoorn et al., 2020). Importantly, their effect is limited to specific groups. As a result, they can be lowered or withdrawn without serious risk of political backlash (see Van Vliet and Wang, 2019).

Party positions

The Socialist Party (SP, 1998) has advocated a higher minimum wage since at least 1998, but the topic has largely been ignored by other parties. Over the decade before the FNV campaign was launched, Members of Parliament proposed dozens of amendments to address poverty and purchasing power. Proposals included targeted measures (such as tax deductions or benefits provided by municipalities) and tweaks to eligibility rules for social welfare. In only one case, in 2009, did the SP propose to raise the minimum wage, by 1.25 per cent. This proposal did not give rise to a real debate in Parliament,¹¹ nor in the media. It was rejected, with only 34 out of 150 votes in favour.

In its analysis of manifestos for the 2017 election, the CPB (2017) found that the plans of the Socialist Party and to a lesser extent of the social democratic PvdA and GroenLinks, the green party, would reduce income inequality. The plans of most other parties, and especially the Christian Democrat CDA and the (economic) liberal-conservative VVD, would result in more income inequality. The Socialist Party wanted to increase the minimum wage and the PvdA wanted to introduce an hourly minimum wage at a level that would increase the minimum wage in some sectors. By contrast the VVD wanted to suspend indexation of the minimum wage, which implied lowering its real value.

Results of the feasibility analysis

As already explained, it was assumed that the Socialist Party, the PvdA, 50PLUS and GroenLinks might support a higher minimum wage. Those four parties jointly held 41 seats in the 150-seat Lower House, which means that no less than 35 additional seats were needed for a majority.

DPES respondents were classified as potential switchers if they had not voted for the Socialist Party, the PvdA, 50PLUS or GroenLinks in 2017, but had at least one of these parties in their consideration set and agreed that the government should take measures to reduce income inequality. Some 20 per cent of respondents met those criteria, which corresponds to 30 seats in the Lower House. This was short of the 35 seats needed for a majority, however. In addition, it was unlikely that all potential switchers would actually do so, and it was likely that some voters would switch in the opposite direction. All in all, it was highly unrealistic that the first mechanism (a change in the composition of Parliament) would result in a majority in the Lower House.

However, it was also possible that a majority may result from parties changing their position to avert vote losses (the second mechanism). Several parties had a substantial share of potential switchers among their voters (Table 2). Importantly, secondary effects may occur: once a party changes its position, this may expose parties that have not done so yet to an increased risk of losing voters. For example, if D66 decided to support a higher minimum wage, the share of potential switchers among VVD voters would rise to 17 per cent and might rise to 20 per cent if more parties changed their position (note that these calculations of secondary effects were not part of the original feasibility study).

Table 2.

Potential switchers for selected parties.

Party	Potential switchers
CDA	26%
ChristenUnie	26%
D66	33%
PVV	39%
PvdD	55%
VVD	12%

Source: Feasibility analysis.

All in all, various parties would risk meaningful vote losses if the minimum wage became a prominent issue. Therefore, they might have an incentive to start supporting a higher minimum wage. This included CDA, which had been inclined to increase income inequality.

The conclusion of the feasibility analysis was that (i) putting the minimum wage on the agenda might plausibly result in majority support in Parliament for a higher minimum wage; (ii) the first mechanism (voters switching to another party, thus changing the composition of Parliament) would not in itself bring about this majority; (iii) obtaining a majority in Parliament would therefore require parties to change their position on the minimum wage, which they might do to prevent vote losses (the second mechanism); and (iv) this might include parties that had initially been inclined to increase income inequality.

Campaign activities

The emphasis in the Voor 14 campaign is not on interacting directly with politicians, but on starting a debate about the minimum wage among voters and in the media. Table 3 lists a selection of campaign activities during the first part of the campaign. They included community organising, digital organising and public actions.

Table 3.

Selected activities during the first part of the campaign.

When	What
February–September 2018	Development of campaign plan; feasibility study
September 2018–August 2019	Door-to-door organising in Rotterdam and other cities; local actions
January 2019	Launch of digital organising campaign, resulting in about 100,000 supporters by 2021
14 April 2019	Action in Rotterdam to mark national campaign launch; publication of economic analysis
As of September 2019	€14 wage floor included in collective bargaining agenda
November 2019	Actions at political party conferences
December 2019	Action at Millionair Fair
Introduced January 2020	Fat Cat Day
As of spring 2020	Addressing city councils
As of April 2020	Actions in support of essential workers

Note: If only a starting date is indicated, activities continued at least throughout the first phase of the campaign.

Sources: Uğural (2021); media reports.

Public actions were organised throughout the campaign. Because of COVID-19-related restrictions, new types of actions were introduced, such as chalking slogans in support of low-paid essential workers in front of supermarkets, health-care institutions and other workplaces. FNV also introduced ‘Fat Cat Day’ in the Netherlands, redefining it as the day in January on which influential CEOs have already received the equivalent of a full year’s minimum wage. In 2020, activists started to contact members of their city council, asking them to take a stand on the minimum wage. By December 2020, 15 municipalities supported the FNV demand (De Jonge, 2020). Frequently, motions were supported by parties that did not yet support a higher minimum wage at national level. It seems likely that these initiatives helped to communicate the views of both voters and local party cadres to national party elites.¹² As of 2019, a wage floor of €14 was included in the FNV’s collective bargaining agenda. As a result, this demand came to play a role in contract negotiations, which raised awareness of it.

The FNV published an economic analysis to address potential concerns about the effects of a higher minimum wage on employment or the state budget (Koopmans, 2019), and an edited volume to show the broader relevance of the topic beyond the trade unions (Boumans, 2020). In addition, opinion polls helped to publicise the fact that voters of almost all parties supported the FNV’s demand (Driessen and Kanne, 2020; Totta, 2019).

Public response

Around the March 2017 election, the minimum wage was mentioned in a few articles that discussed the Socialist Party manifesto. This elicited no response from other parties or other actors. After the national launch of the Voor 14 campaign on 14 April 2019, raising the minimum wage became a subject of public debate. Media reported the action, as well as responses to the FNV demand from employers’ organisations and academics (De Vries, 2019; Pelgrim, 2019; Trompert, 2019). This was followed by mentions of opposition parties supporting a higher minimum wage. By the end of 2020, when parties published their manifestos for the 2021 election, coalition parties were frequently reported to support this goal as well (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Support for a higher minimum wage, as reported in selected newspapers. Number of articles reporting that FNV or political parties advocate raising the adult minimum wage, aggregated by month, January 2017–March 2021.

Opinion articles show that groups – including women’s rights campaign Stem op een vrouw (Fontein and Partiman, 2020) and church organisations Protestantse Diaconie Amsterdam and Pauluskerk (Van Bezooijen and Couvée, 2020), joined the FNV in calling for a higher minimum wage. Although some counter-mobilisation by business organisations occurred, the effect was limited during the first phase of the campaign.

Political response

By the 2021 election, supporting a higher minimum wage had become a vote-maximising strategy for political parties, because almost all voters supported it and some had strong opinions on it (Kamphorst, 2024). How this translated into Lower House support has been tracked in relation to two goals: a higher minimum wage and an increase to €14 per hour. Parties were assumed to support these goals if they voted in favour of a motion or amendment to that effect, or if they included the goal in their manifesto for the next Lower House election (note that parties that express support for a higher minimum wage may still at some point withdraw it).

As Figure 2 shows, support for a higher minimum wage increased in steps. Towards the end of 2018, 50PLUS made proposals for a 3 per cent increase in the minimum wage. These did not trigger a public debate or elicit much of a debate in Parliament, but a number of parties supported them. In July 2019, after the national launch of the Voor 14 campaign, Parliament extensively discussed a Socialist Party proposal to raise the minimum wage by 10 per cent. Various parties referred to the FNV’s position.¹³ A motion to raise the minimum wage was presented by 50PLUS, which was rejected, with 69 out of 150 votes in favour. Support had further increased by the end of 2020. Coalition parties, which had voted against motions to raise the minimum wage, used their election manifestos to change their position.¹⁴ Almost all parties published manifestos that included a higher minimum wage. This included parties, most notably VVD and initially¹⁵ CDA, that are generally not ideologically inclined to reduce income inequality. Meanwhile, some opposition parties used their manifestos to start supporting a minimum wage of €14.

Figure 2.

Support in the Dutch Lower House for a higher minimum wage, expressed in seats. Joint number of seats of parties supporting a higher minimum wage, and of parties supporting a minimum wage of €14.

In its coalition agreement, the new government announced a 7.5 per cent increase in the minimum wage (later upped to 8.05 per cent), presented as the first such measure since the establishment of the minimum wage in 1969. It also announced the introduction of an hourly minimum wage, which resulted in an additional increase in the hourly minimum wage between zero and 11 per cent, depending on the sector.

Discussion

Prior to the Voor 14 campaign, raising the minimum wage had not been on the political agenda. There were proposals to raise it in 2009 and 2018, but these were largely ignored by other political parties and the media. The national launch of the Voor 14 campaign in 2019 elicited responses from employers’ organisations, political parties and academics. A ‘cascade’ occurred in that organisations – such as women’s and church organisations – joined the FNV in demanding a higher minimum wage. Political support for a higher minimum wage grew, resulting in an above-indexation increase of between 8 and 20 per cent.

Raising the minimum wage had ‘after more than half a century once again become a political theme’ (Been et al., 2021). The pattern of the political and media response suggests that the FNV campaign contributed to this outcome, which is also the opinion of Besamusca et al. (2021) and Voncken and Otjes (2024 – n. 10). However, alternative explanations must be considered as well.

It has been suggested that issues may become ‘noisy’ as a result of crises and scandals, efforts of political entrepreneurs, and protests and strikes. Possible explanations for the Dutch minimum wage becoming a ‘noisy’ issue are the inflation surge of 2021, and the increased visibility of low-paid essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic (crises). Other possibilities include the efforts of parties such as the Socialist Party to put the minimum wage on the agenda; and protests as part of the FNV campaign. In addition, the increase in low-paid work in the Netherlands may have played a role.

These factors may well have contributed to the outcome of a higher minimum wage. However, COVID-19, inflation and the increase in low-paid work cannot explain why the public debate now started to focus on raising the minimum wage (previously, the preferred policy instrument for addressing poverty and purchasing power had been targeted measures, such as tax benefits and local government anti-poverty programmes). In addition, none of the alternative explanations can explain the timing of this change, which happened in April 2019. The number of low-paid jobs had been growing since at least 2009 and the Socialist Party had been trying to put the minimum wage on the agenda since at least 1998. COVID and the strong rise in inflation had not happened yet in April 2019. In conclusion, alternative explanations cannot explain the nature and timing of the political and media response.

Prior to the FNV campaign, a feasibility study was done. One conclusion was that the campaign might result in a Parliamentary majority for raising the minimum wage, which indeed happened. Second, it was concluded that this would not be brought about solely by the first mechanism (voters switching to parties that already supported a higher minimum wage). Here again, outcomes are consistent with expectations: the parties that were initially assumed to support a higher minimum wage did not come close to a joint majority in Parliament in the 2021 election.

Third, it was concluded that a majority would therefore have to be the result of parties changing their position on the minimum wage. Again, this is what happened. And fourth, it was expected that this might include parties that are not ideologically inclined to do so. A case in point is the CDA, although this party eventually withdrew its support for a higher minimum wage. All in all, campaign outcomes have been largely consistent with the results of the feasibility study.

Of course, based on a single case study one cannot conclude whether these findings are generalisable to other contexts. On theoretical grounds, it seems likely that this type of campaign will work only in countries with a multi-party system, and for goals that have broad voter support. Future research might shed more light on what determines the effectiveness of public agenda-setting, for example by studying campaigns with other goals, campaigns in other institutional and political contexts, or campaigns that faced stronger counter-mobilisation from business associations.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

1

Interestingly, both the German and UK governments have intervened because they wanted higher minimum wage increases than the commission had advised. Arguably, minimum wage commissions are attractive to governments in that they allow them to avoid blame for low minimum wages, but also to claim credit when they override the commission to raise minimum wages above its recommendations.

2

Indeed, found that public support is more critical for interest group success under circumstances that suggest high salience.

3

See : ‘when organized interests defend less widely supported views, they should refrain from outside lobbying, as too much attention for their cause may invite counteractive lobbying and increase pressure to the benefit of more widely supported positions’. Note that public agenda-setting may still work when a goal does not initially enjoy broad support, but voters can be convinced to support it. An example would be a hypothetical situation in which a majority of voters want the government to reduce income inequality, but do not necessarily think of the minimum wage as a way of achieving this. A campaign might try to convince voters that a higher minimum wage is an effective way of reducing inequality.

4

On DPES, see . The analysis presented here differs in minor respects from the original analysis.

5

Ideally, support for a higher minimum wage should be measured directly. That said, the proxy is a fairly good indicator of support for a higher minimum wage. An analysis of data from polls conducted in 2019 and 2020 shows that over 80 per cent of respondents who said that the government should take measures to reduce income inequality also supported the FNV demand for a minimum wage of €14.

6

Consideration sets were constructed using the method proposed by Van Holsteyn and Irwin (2017). For a list of parties, DPES asks respondents how likely it is that they will ever vote for this party, on a scale from 1 (never) to 10 (definitely). Respondents may, however, differ in how they interpret such a scale (Oscarsson and Rosema, 2019). For some respondents, a score of 7 might mean that they would probably not vote for that party; for others that they might. Van Holsteyn and Irwin addressed this by using a threshold value for each respondent, set to the highest score this respondent has given any party, minus two. So if the answers of a particular respondent range from 1 to 9, parties with a score of 7 or higher will be assigned to their consideration set. In addition, in the current analysis, a small number of respondents who awarded only the minimum likelihood of 1 were excluded.

7

A more advanced way of exploring the effects of an agenda-setting campaign would be through an iterative model. In each step, the model identifies the party that would gain most from changing its position, taking into account the decisions made by other parties in previous steps. The iteration ends when no party is left that can substantially improve its vote share by changing its position.

8

See, for example, DGB (2014), Le Billon and Robequain (2006), Poje (2019), Myant and Drahokoupil (2017), Martišková et al. (2021) and .

9

OECD, Minimum relative to average wages of full-time workers.

10

TK35142-13.

11

One MP asked how it would be paid for (TK35-3360).

12

A CDA member of Tilburg city council indicated that she did not consider this a matter for local government, but supported a higher minimum wage and would take this up with the committee that was preparing the national election manifesto (council meeting of 29 October 2020).

13

TK35142-13.

14

See , who find that coalition parties are less responsive to public opinion when they are bound by a coalition agreement.

15

CDA included a higher minimum wage in its draft manifesto, a position that had been ‘hard-fought’ by the members. After a leadership change, the new party leader removed the issue and made some other changes before the manifesto was finalised. It has been suggested that this unusual last-minute intervention served the interests of a group of businesses that had recently made substantial contributions to the party, but the party insisted this had played no role (Strop and L’Ami, 2021).

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