respective year) Romania Two minimum wage levels are enforced in Romania. For state employees, the level is set by law at 600 RON (~US$200). For all other employees, the wage is set at 440RON (~US$145) by collective bargaining, which also stipulates multiplication indices for various levels of education. Jobs that require high-school and college qualifications are paid at least 1.5 and 2 times the minimum wage, respectively. Teachers' unions resorted to justice to claim same treatment and be paid according to collective bargaining. As of November 2007, they won three landmark cases and expect similar decisions in several dozens other courts. A single, unified level was proposed starting 1 January 2008 but it failed. Taiwan The Taiwanese government does not have a set minimum wage, but a basic wage in its Labor Standards Law serves the minimum wage function. The basic wage set per month is NT$25,250, NT$168 per hour, effective July 1, 2022. United Kingdom Municipal regulation of wage levels began in some towns in 1524. Wages Councils The Trade Boards Act 1909 created four Trades Boards that set minimum wages which varied between industries for a number of sectors where "sweating" was generally regarded as a problem and where collective bargaining was not well established. This system was extended considerably after the Second World War; in 1945 Trades Boards became Wages Councils, which set minimum wage standards in many sectors of the economy, including the service sector as well as manufacturing. Wages Councils were finally abolished in 1993, having fallen into decline due, in large part, to Trades Union opposition. A lower limit of pay, or "pay floor" was regarded as threatening the voluntary system of collective bargaining favoured in the UK. The government had first made a serious attempt to abolish Wages Councils in 1986, having abandoned existing legislation that tried to widen the scope of voluntary agreements to include those firms that had not taken part in negotiations, such as the Fair Wages Resolutions. These required that government contractors pay fair wages and respect the rights of their employees to be members of trades unions. Instead the Wages Act 1986 reformed the wages councils and abolished the power to create new ones. National Minimum Wage A National Minimum Wage (NMW) was introduced for the first time by the Labour government on 1 April 1999 at the rate of £3.60 per hour for those workers aged 22