The origins of the minimum wage

By Michel Husson

"The boost to the Smic, we know that it destroys jobs, so it's not the right method [1]." This argument, soberly summarized by Muriel Pénicaud, the French Minister of Labor, has a long history that this article seeks to restore. It shows that the tension between the learned exponents of the inescapable laws of the economy and the partisans of social justice has always existed, and that it persists today.

The Sinister Laws of Economics

"The corpse in England's closet is that her people are undernourished" wrote in 1865 a doctor, Joseph Brown [2]. There is "something rotten" behind the country's economic power (p. 2). But an increase in wages is not the appropriate remedy, because “the laws of political economy are inexorable! Violate them, and the punishment will eventually befall you” (p. 7).

This dilemma sums up perfectly the point of view of the dominant economists of the time: certainly, there are unbearable social situations but the laws of the economy prevent us from being able to remedy them. This was already the approach of John Stuart Mill, one of the most influential economists at the time, in his Principles of Political Economy [3] published in 1848. .” The easiest way "to keep wages at a suitable rate is by legal fixing [and] some have proposed to establish a minimum wage." The idea of ​​a minimum wage was therefore already in vogue, and there is even the outline of what the Trade Boards Act of 1909 will implement: the level of the minimum wage could be set jointly by " councils called in England Bureaux de commerce [Trade boards], Conseils de prud'hommes in France [where one could] discuss amicably the rate of wages and promulgate them in such a way as to make them obligatory for employers and for workers. In this system, decisions would not be made according to the state of the market, but according to natural equity, so as to give the workers a reasonable wage and the capitalist a reasonable profit” (p. 403).

The trail of compromise had already been sketched out, but it raised a doctrinal problem: from the point of view of rigorous political economy, what do "reasonable" wages and profits mean? But there is more. Mill also discusses the idea of ​​a job guarantee backed by a tax on the rich: "popular sentiment holds that it is a duty of the rich or of the state to find employment for all the poor . If the moral influence of public opinion does not induce the rich to save on their consumption what is needed to give the poor work and a reasonable wage, it is supposed that the duty of the state is to provide for it by local or general taxes” (p. 405). Here again, we note that the idea of ​​a “job guarantee” defended today by heterodox economists was already in the public debate.

Mill rejects these propositions on the basis of the argument which will be constantly used in the debates on the minimum wage: "if the law or opinion succeeded in keeping wages above the rate which would result from competition, it is evident that a few workers would remain unemployed.” This paragraph already contains the fundamental opposition between “opinion” and the laws of competition, in other words between the ideal and science, in this case political economy. The task of the economist is therefore decidedly “gloomy”: even if he shares the most generous aspirations, he must explain why they are unrealistic and would lead to perverse effects.

Mill's demonstration is based on the so-called wage fund theory. It had already been formulated very clearly by John Ramsay McCulloch [4] in 1826: at any given time, “wages depend on the amount of fund or capital which is devoted to the payment of wages, compared to the number of workers” (pp. 4-5). Mill takes it up as it stands: “Wages therefore depend on the ratio which exists between the number of the laboring population and the capital whatever allocated to the purchase of labor, or to shorten it, capital (…) The fate of the laboring class does not can only be improved by changing the ratio to one's advantage, and any plan for lasting improvement that is not based on this principle is a disappointment” (pp. 390-391).

The total amount of wages is therefore given. If the individual salary is increased, then the number of employed persons must decrease arithmetically. We would say today that the elasticity of employment to salary is equal to unity: a salary increase of 1% would lead to a drop in the workforce of 1%. However, this theory has not really been abandoned: it is accepted at 70%, since a "consensus" has long been established around an elasticity of 0.7 [5].

However, Mill himself had renounced this theory in his review of the book On Labor [6] by his friend William Thornton: "The doctrine hitherto taught by most economists (including myself) which denied the possibility that collective bargaining (trade combinations) can increase wages (…) has lost its scientific basis, and must be rejected [7]” (p. 52).

Alfred Marshall will replace John Stuart Mill in the role of lead economist. He too says he is concerned about the fight against poverty, which he believes was the reason for his choice of the profession of economist. But his doctrine on this point is hazy: as Joan Robinson mentions with her usual causticity, Marshall had "a cunning (foxy) way of saving his conscience by mentioning exceptions, but doing it in such a way that his students could continue to believe in the rule [8]” (p. 2).

We find in Marshall the same tension between social aspirations and the harsh laws of economics. In a lecture given at Cambridge in 1896 [9], where he gave his advice to a new generation of economists, he recognized that the movement in favor of a living wage was based on "a great and important principle" and that the he economist must embrace the idea that “the well-being of the many is more important than that of the few.” But the young economist should not “fear the conclusion to which the meticulous analysis of the data leads him” because he has no “class or personal interests.” This clause is important (and very current): it is asserted that the messages of the economist are based on pure scientific objectivity, even if they may run counter to the feelings and preferences of the messenger. He must not be afraid "on occasion", and it is even his mission, to "oppose the multitude for his own good."

Marshall thus notes that the calls in favor of a living wage are multiplying among dockworkers, miners, cotton spinners and glassblowers. Unfortunately, these "ordinary people fail to see that, if generalized, the means most commonly advocated would impoverish everyone" (p. 128).

The irruption of hard science

Marshall lacked a coherent theory on which to base his recommendations. The so-called marginalist (or neo-classical) theory will provide it by introducing a fundamental turning point in the formalization of the problem: the salary of a worker is – or should be – determined by his “marginal” productivity.

In an article where John Bates Clark, one of the inventors of this theory, gives a popularized presentation of it, the latter refers to this “basic fact”: the wage “is limited by the specific productivity of work”, and therefore it is only “when the specific product of a worker is equal to his wages that he can keep his job (…) To demand more than what his labor produces is equivalent in practice to asking for a vacation ticket [10] (p. 111).

Clark does not dispute that an increase in the minimum wage would be desirable: it would even be “odious, for well-to-do people, to deny it.” Once again, we find the dissociation between the desirable and the possible. The only question is whether the economy can handle it, and the theory sadly leaves no room for doubt: “we can be sure – without the need for extensive testing – that raising wages will reduce the number of employed workers. Clark even goes so far as to assert that meeting the demands of the time would have an effect on the companies involved “comparable to that of a hurricane or a Mexican [sic] revolution.”

Finally, Clark observes that destitution and social distress lead citizens to turn to the state, but the latter is nevertheless "in no way responsible for their problems." Here, Clark resorts to a small touch of stigmatization: the "social defects" of the worst off are in his eyes a "more convincing explanation" (pp. 110-111). This is the necessary complement which will lead to many excesses: aspirations to a decent life are not only incompatible with the laws of the economy, but they come from people who are responsible for their condition. Here we have the germ of the usual pendant to this theoretical assembly: the unemployed are “unemployable” because their individual productivity is too low for them to deserve to be employed. And this deficiency depends neither on the employers nor on the State.

This new doxa on the minimum wage is repeated by Arthur Pigou, at the conclusion of his book on unemployment [11]: “when humanitarian considerations lead to the establishment of a minimum wage below which no worker will be hired, the The existence of a large number of people who are not worth this minimum wage is the cause of unemployment” (pp. 242-243).

In 1920, in The Economics of Welfare [12], Pigou maintains this position: the remedy for low wages – which, admittedly, “offend the public conscience” – is not to be found in the establishment of a national minimum wage which would destroy jobs, but in “the direct action of the State aimed at assuring to all families, with, if necessary, State aids, an adequate minimum level in each department of life” (p. 558) . However Pigou will at the same time insist on the limits of this state action. He begins by noting that there is “among pragmatic philanthropists a general agreement on the fact that the minimum conditions of existence should be guaranteed, to avoid situations of extreme deprivation; and that any transfer of resources from the relatively wealthy to the relatively poor that is necessary to achieve this objective should be implemented” (p. 789).

One might think that Pigou rallied to this “general agreement” since he himself referred to “direct action by the state with, if necessary, state aid.” However, if these transfers could improve the lot of the most disadvantaged, they would lead to a reduction in the "national dividend". After a rather confused demonstration, Pigou comes to the decisive argument: “in the current situation, no manipulation of the distribution would make it possible to ensure a sufficiently high standard of living for all citizens. Social reformers must therefore give up their hopes: it is inevitable that the national minimum must still be set at a deplorably low level” (pp. 792-793).

The reasoning is therefore final and operates in three stages: 1. low wages are shocking; 2. but an increase in the minimum wage would destroy jobs; 3. it would therefore be better to have social transfers; 4. unfortunately, they would not be sufficient to really improve the situation of the poorest and would reduce the national income. This is a fine example of a perverse effect, a classic trick of reactionary rhetoric [13].

A century after Pigou, the reasoning has not really changed: the minimum wage is not the right tool to fight against poverty, so it is better to resort to various forms of benefits. This is, in France, the key argument of the “group of experts on the minimum wage.”

The new dogma is installed. Philip Wicksteed, a marginalist economist disciple of Stanley Jevons only repeats it. If an individual, he explains, asks for more than "the economic value he produces for someone else (…) or if it is done for him [the union], no one will employ him, because each will prefer to do without his services rather than pay for them beyond what they are worth [14]” (p. 77). Wicksteed's interest is that – although a pastor – he struggles to “scientifically” dress up his class interests: “we middle-class people know very well what we would do if servants' wages were doubled .” And if a law were to impose this doubling, it "would in no way improve the lot of the servants whom we had ceased to employ" and the legislators "would discover with astonishment that there was a problem" (p. 79).

Unintentionally, however, Wicksteed will put his finger on one of the faults of the neo-classical theory by recognizing “that all wealth is a social product; that it is impossible to disentangle the precise contribution of each individual; and that the distribution of wealth must obey social laws.” Without knowing it, he rediscovered the observation made long before him by the socialist economist Thomas Hodgskin [15]: insofar as production is collective, "there is nothing left that one can call the natural remuneration of individual work (…) the question is to know what part of this product produced in common must go to each of the individuals engaged in this work” (p. 85).

But their conclusions are obviously different. Where Hodgskin thinks that there is "no other way to decide this question than to leave the workers themselves to decide it freely" (p. 85), Wicksteed decrees that the term "wage" does not makes sense only in the field of economics. Consequently, the notion of “living wage” must be replaced by a “set of devices which belong to another sphere [than the economy]” (p. 78).

Definitely, many contemporary arguments are present from the 19th century. They are based on the distinction made between two fields: that of the "pure" economy and that of "social laws." In the sphere of the economy, constraining laws prevail, to which one must submit, under penalty of triggering perverse effects. It is therefore outside that we can envisage the objectives of social justice. But this partition could not sustainably resist the eruption of social struggles.

From the fight against the sweating system to the first laws

The term sweating system is impossible to translate (sweat means to sweat). It designated custom work in private homes or in small workshops; manufacturers provided the materials, sometimes tools, and then collected the finished products, for which the workers – largely female workers – were paid by the piece. The term was gradually extended to work in factories to designate forms of overexploitation.

In 1888, an ad hoc committee of the House of Lords (Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Sweating System) was created, which formalized the concept of the sweating system. In its final report published in 1890, it proposed (after much deliberation) the following definition: “a rate of wages insufficient to cover the needs of the workers or disproportionate to the work done; excessive working hours; the insalubrity of the houses in which the work is carried out [16]” (p. 388). The commission estimates that a quarter of the proportion of the industrial labor force falls within this definition. Later, the term will be used to designate all forms of overexploitation.

It is in this context that sociological surveys of living and working conditions are developing. The most influential are that of Seebohm Rowntree [17] and especially that, voluminous, of Charles Booth, whose publication is spread out from 1889 to 1902 [18]. We also see the appearance of a reflection on the pacification of professional relations: Industrial Peace was, for example, the title of one of Pigou's first works, published in 1905 [19].

In 1906, an exhibition was organized by the Daily News to denounce the misdeeds of the home sweating system. You could observe workers (mainly women workers) at work, attend conferences, such as those of George Bernard Shaw or James Ramsay MacDonald, (future Labor Prime Minister), and even lantern projections. The exhibition guide [20] is a fascinating document that includes a rich iconography and a detailed analysis (working time, income, etc.) of the different activities.

This exhibition was the first step towards the foundation, a few months later, of the National Anti-Sweating League which organized in October 1906 a conference for a minimum wage [21]. This conference brings together representatives of trade unions, left-wing political parties and women's organizations such as the Women's Co-operative Guild. It brings together 341 delegates representing 2 million organized workers. The high proportion of women involved explains why it was mainly women's organizations that took the initiative in this field, rather than the trade unions: another conference on the sweated industries which was held in Manchester in 1906 bears witness to this [ 22].

Towards the minimum wage

One of the main speakers is William Pember Reeves; he was New Zealand Minister of Labor from 1892 to 1896, and in this capacity the promoter of one of the first experiments in branch minima. He describes in detail (pp. 69-72) the three stages of the New Zealand system: “First we seek to obtain a branch agreement between the boss and the workers (master and men); the settlement of disputes is then ensured by conciliation offices; and, in the last instance, it is the Court of Arbitration which has authority to settle disputes.” He suggests experimenting with “taking the New Zealand system as it is but, instead of applying it generally, making a list of the sectors you think it might apply to.”

Reeves makes no secret ("I don't want to navigate under false colors in front of you") that this device is intended "to prevent strikes and lockouts, which are a nuisance for the public and whose consequences for workers who participate in it are unjust and arbitrary.” In short, Reeves agrees with his "friend Sidney Webb" that there is "a better way to settle labor disputes than the old system of strikes and lockouts." This “old system” must be abandoned: “you should tell people: 'we are going to have fair conditions and social peace'.”

These mobilizations will lead to the vote of the Trade Boards Act in 1909, following the victory of the Liberal Party (whose government included representatives of the Labor Party). This legislation is the culmination of a process of awareness and social mobilization, in a difficult economic context. The period 1873-1896, opened by a financial panic, was indeed marked by a slowdown in economic activity and could be called "the long depression". This situation was accompanied by riots, notably in London during the winters of 1886 and 1887. However, the Trade Boards Act only concerned four industrial sectors: clothing; manufacture of paper boxes; lace and netting; chain manufacturing [23].

A sui generis liberalism

The government was then with a liberal majority, but it was a “new liberalism” of which it is interesting to examine the doctrinal references, quite far from classical liberalism. Leonard Hobhouse, one of the main theoreticians of this current, writes for example: "There is somehow a problem in the social system, a defect in the economic machine that the worker, as an individual, cannot correct . He is the last to have a say in controlling the market. It is not his fault if there is overproduction in his industry, or if a new, cheaper process depreciates his particular skill. It does not direct or regulate the industry. He is not responsible for its fluctuations, but he must nevertheless bear the consequences. This is why it is not charity, but justice that he asks for [24]” (pp. 158-159).

This indictment leads to a justification of the intervention of the State: its function is “to ensure the conditions allowing the citizens to gain by their own efforts all that is necessary for their full civic effectiveness. The “right to work” and the right to a “living wage” are just as legitimate as human or property rights. They are therefore an integral part of a balanced social order.”

One of the other theoreticians of this current is the economist John Hobson (better known for his work on imperialism). Even if he does not claim socialism, he will approach the Labor Party after the First World War. In any case, he clearly rejects the presuppositions of classical liberalism, and in particular the idea that "a worker should be free to sell his labor as he sees fit." This so-called freedom to work amounts to the "freedom to work as his employer decides", so that the worker is not "an isolated unit, whose employment contract concerns only himself and his employer [25 ]” (p. 187).

Hobson therefore seeks to respond to the classic (and still current) line of argument which he sums up thus, in a lecture where he discusses the influence of a legal minimum wage on employment: "Opponents of legislation on the minimum wage put forward the argument that it would lead to a reduction in the volume of employment in the sectors subject to the sweating system, which would not be compensated by a corresponding increase in employment in other branches; in a word, that it would aggravate the problem of unemployment” (p. 34).

The proposals put forward by Hobson are inspired in particular by the work of Ludwig Stein, The social question in the light of philosophy [26]. He thus sums up, taking it up as his own, the project of a "minimum subsistence level" which could "be obtained partly by public employment, partly by the influence exercised directly by state industry on the maintaining decent working conditions and wages in private industry, in part by levying taxes.” Hobson speaks favorably of the alternative policy proposed by Stein, which would seek to restrict the “economic power of private capitalists”, and which is based on “the taxation of income, wealth, and inheritance [27]” (p. 381). It is probably superfluous to note the similarity of these propositions with those put forward by Thomas Piketty in his last work [28].

For Hobson [29], the Trade Boards Act is part of a logic that refuses to rely on the free play of the market: "The setting of wages by so-called free competition does not in any way guarantee obtaining a salary of efficiency, or even subsistence. From the standpoint of employers' immediate profits, sweating always pays off. But from society's point of view, he never pays. In this sense, the policy of organized workers, which seeks to implement the doctrine of the minimum wage, is not only a policy of self-protection of the working classes, but a salutary social policy. It is for this reason that the State intervenes by creating Trade Boards to enforce the application of this principle in the so-called sweating industries and establishes, at least in theory, its validity for all jobs and public procurement” (p. 197).

These long extracts are so many cobblestones in the pond of the dominant economic theory which claims to be the laws of pure economic calculation. We already find there all the ingredients of the proposals today considered as heterodox, and in particular the responsibility of the State for the respect of the rights to employment and to a decent salary, which implies a redistribution of wealth.

Union reluctance

In his ex post evaluations of the application of the Trade Board Act [30], Richard Henry Tawney, an influential Christian socialist and social reformer, makes "a finding as common as it is usually overlooked" which foreshadows modern wage theory. efficiency: "with the increase in wages paid, the quality of the channels produced has improved." In other words, “bad wages produce bad work” (p. 113).

There is, however, a reservation, slipped into Tawney's study of the garment industry [31]: "There is no need to raise the broader question of a sector which would be unable to pay the low minimum wages set by the Garment Trade Board, because our survey suggests the garment industry can do it” (p. 105). But what about the others? And Tawney wonders what would happen in a bad economic phase and recognizes that it is “still too early to determine [32]” (p. 70).

A little later, however, Tawney insisted on the rupture introduced by the new legislation which meant "the silent abandonment of the doctrine, defended for three generations with an almost religious intensity, according to which wages must be fixed by free competition, and by free competition alone [33]”.

Tawney made another important finding. In his investigations, he observed the mistrust of the unions who fear that their role will be diminished: once the minimum wage has been set, employers could use this as an argument to say that there is nothing more to negotiate. He multiplies the arguments against these concerns, explaining for example that the establishment of a minimum wage "does not make unionism less necessary, because the rates fixed by the Trade Board being only a minimum, they are inevitably lower than what the more prosperous sections of an industry can afford to pay [34]” (p. 91).

This reluctance with regard to the minimum wage was for a long time the position of the English trade unions, which feared that the scope of collective bargaining would be reduced or that, if set too low, the minimum could serve as a reference for other wage levels. We find this same mistrust in the United States, where Samuel Gompers, the leader of the AFL (American Federation of Labor) has always opposed minimum wage laws. For him, “the minimum would become the maximum and we would quickly need to distance ourselves.” Rather than a single minimum wage (the level of which Gompers moreover refuses to specify) it is better to have a “principle, a rule of global life [35].”

In a letter to Maud Younger [36], a trade unionist and feminist, Gompers is even more categorical: if a legal minimum wage were introduced, "there will be only one more step to take to force employees to work according to the goodwill of their employers, or of the State, and it would then be slavery. We want a minimum wage to be established, but we want it to be achieved through the solidarity of the workers themselves, relying on the strength of their unions, rather than by any law”.

These same reluctances have long fueled the refusal by the German industrial unions of the establishment of a minimum wage, before they finally rallied to this project. But the same type of arguments are still invoked, within the ETUC (European Trade Union Confederation) by the Swedish and Italian trade unions to oppose the prospect of a European system of minimum wages [37] (Schulten, et al., 2016)

The usefulness of the mirror

The purpose of this brief journey through time is to show that all the arguments mobilized on the question of the minimum wage were already present from the first hours of established capitalism. On the side of the dominants, the defense of class interests (with all due respect to Marshall) has always been draped in the noble garments of an increasingly formalized “science”, but whose message is almost immutable: by wanting to improve their lot, the “ordinary people” (people “who are nothing”, as Macron would say) risk worsening the economic situation. And, failing to succeed in upsetting social relations, the dominated oscillate between national legislation and local compromises. (December 2019)

Ratings

[1] Muriel Pénicaud, “No “boost” at the Smic because “it destroys jobs””, Europe 1, December 9, 2018.

[2] Joseph Brown, The Food of the People, 1865.

[3] John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Volume 1, 1848.

[4] John Ramsay McCulloch, A Treatise on the Circumstances which Determine the Rate of Wages and the Condition of the Working Classes, 1826.

[5] Michel Husson, Creating jobs by lowering wages? Editions du Croquant, 2015. See this summary: “Cost of labor and employment: a story of figures”, July 2014.

[6] William Thornton, On Labour. Its Wrongful Claims and Rightful Dues, Its Actual Present and Possible Future, 1869.

[7] John Stuart Mill, « Thornton on Labour and Its Claims » Fortnightly Review, May & June 1869.

[8] Joan Robinson, « What has become of the Keynesian Revolution? » in Joan Robinson (ed.), After Keynes, 1973.

[9] Alfred Marshall, « The Old Generation of Economists and the New », The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 11, No. 2, January 1897.

[10] John Bates Clark, « The Minimum Wage », The Atlantic Monthly n°112, September 1913.

[11] Arthur Pigou, Unemployment, 1913.

[12] Arthur Pigou, The Economics of Welfare, 1920.

[13] Alfred Hirschman, Deux siècles de rhétorique réactionnaire, 1991 ; The Rhetoric of Reaction. Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy.

[14] Philip Wicksteed, « The Distinction Between Earnings and Income, and Between a Minimum Wage and a Decent Maintenance: A Challenge », dans William Temple, ed,. The Industrial Unrest and the Living Wage, 1913.

[15] Thomas Hodgskin, Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital, 1825.

[16] « What is Sweated Industry? », extrait du Fifth Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Sweating System (1890); reproduit dans WHBCourt, British Economic History 1870-1914. Commentary and Documents, 1965.

[17] Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty, A Study of Town Life, 1901.

[18] Albert Fried and Richard M. Elman, eds (1969), Charles Booth's London. A Portrait of the Poor at the Turn of the Century, Drawn from His « Life and Labour of the People in London ».

[19] Arthur Pigou, Principles & Methods of Industrial Peace, 1905.

[20] Richard Mudie-Smith, Handbook of the « Daily News » Sweated Industries' Exhibition, 1906.

[21] National Anti-Sweating League, Report of Conference on A Minimum Wage, 1907.

[22] Chetham's Library, « Sweated industries », June 2018 .

[23] JJ Mallon, The Trade Boards Act, National Anti-Sweating League, 1910 ; appendices to Philip Snowden, The Living Wage, 1912.

[24] Leonard Hobhouse, Liberalism, 1911.

[25] John Hobson, Problems of Poverty. An Inquiry into the Industrial Condition of the Poor, 1891.

[26] Ludwig Stein, Die sociale frage im lichte der philosophie, 1897.

[27] John Hobson, « review of Ludwig Stein, Die Sociale Frage im Lichte der Philosophie », The Economic Journal, Vol. 8, No. 31, September 1898.

[28] Thomas Piketty, Capital et idéologie, 2019.

[29] John Hobson, Work and Wealth. A Human Valuation, 1914.

[30] Richard Tawney, The Establishment of Minimum Rates in the Chain-Making Industry Under The Trade Boards Act of 1909, 1914.

[31] Richard Tawney, The Establishment of Minimum Rates in the Tailoring Industry Under The Trade Boards Act of 1909, 1915.

[32] Richard Tawney, 1914, déjà cité.

[33] Richard Tawney, « On minimum wage fixing » in League of Nations Union, Towards industrial peace, 1927 ; cité par Sheila Blackburn, « Ideology and Social Policy: The Origins of The Trade Boards Act », The Historical Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1, March 1991, p. 43.

[34] Richard Tawney, 1915, déjà cité.

[35] Samuel Gompers, « A Minimum Living Wage », American Federationist, 1898, cité par Thomas A. Stapleford, « Defining a 'living wage' in America: transformations in union wage theories, 1870–1930 », Labor History, Vol. 49, No. 1, February 2008, p. 3.

[36] Samuel Gompers, « Letter to Maud Younger », May 17, 1912, dans Peter J. Albert, Grace Palladino, eds, The Samuel Gompers Papers, volume 8, 2001

[37] Thorsten Schulten, Torsten Müller et Line Eldring, « Pour une politique de salaire minimum européen : perspectives et obstacles », La revue de l'Ires n° 89, 2016/2.