However, in the period since the mid-1980s, when import penetration has increased
most strongly, there has been an increase in the relative use of skilled workers. In Spain,
Italy and the UK there has been an absolute increase in the employment of non-manual
workers, whilst manual employment has continued to plummet. This is more difficult to
reconcile with standard trade theory. It may reflect a somewhat different response to
international competition since the md-1980s. The observed increase in the relative use
of skilled labour could reflect an attempt by European footwear producers to upgrade
their production and to concentrate upon the production of high quality footwear and/or
upon design intensive activities. We return to this issue below when we discuss
evidence of upgrading from data on exports by EU footwear producers. It may also
reflect the impact of outsourcing, which we suggest above has been an important feature
of the adjustment to globalisation, as low-skill intensive activities are moved overseas
whilst the skill-intensive parts of the production process are retained in Europe.
3.2 Developments in Wages
Globalisation may lead to social exclusion even for workers who remain employed if
there is a significant deterioration in their relative and more importantly their real wage.
Here, in Table 3 below, we present the available data on wages for the unskilled and
salaries for the skilled workers employed in the footwear sector in various countries
during the 1980s and early 1990s. What is surprising from these data is that the wage
rate of the unskilled has increased at a faster rate than the salaries of the skilled except
for the UK and for Spain, but where only 5 observations are available for the latter.
Intense competition from low-wage sources of supply would be expected to put
downward pressure on the relative wage of the unskilled footwear workers in Europe.
The final rows of the table also show that, with the exception Spain over the short 5-
year period for which data is available, wages of unskilled workers employed in the
footwear industry in Europe have increased at a faster rate than the general price index
since 1980. This differs from the picture for the US where the real wage of unskilled
footwear workers fell, on average by 1.7 per cent each year since 1980. In this sense we
find no evidence from these data that unskilled footwear workers in Europe have
suffered from the compression of real wages experienced by their counterparts in the
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