My father, the economist Fred Bayliss, who has died aged 89, was an expert in industrial relations whose work helped to shape the national minimum wage.
In 1965 he became industrial relations adviser to the National Board for Prices and Incomes, the institution charged with managing the intricate detail of prime minister Harold Wilson’s incomes policies. The cutting edge of pay bargaining at that time was largely informal, and Fred built up a talented team of field-workers to investigate these often mysterious processes on the shopfloor. He then moved to the newly created Commission on Industrial Relations, and in 1973 took on the administration of the Pay Board. The following year he became secretary of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, which reviewed evidence on inequality and produced recommendations on taxation.
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