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.
From 1977 at the Department of Employment he was involved in industrial relations policy during difficult times that included a miners’ strike. But his life-long belief in the importance of trade unions and in the sanctity of researched evidence were unshaken. He retired from the department in 1986 and five years later his Fabian pamphlet, Making a Minimum Wage Work, was published. As a result he became involved in planning the mechanisms by which a minimum wage might work, including the idea of creating an independent group – including employers – that would make regular recommendations on adjustments to the minimum. Many of his ideas were taken up when the minimum wage became law under a Labour government in 1998.
The eldest of three boys, Fred was born in Whitwick, Leicestershire, to Gertrude (nee Henson), a teacher, and Gordon, a plumber and builder. Fred proved himself to be a quick learner and after attending Ashby Boys’ grammar school won a scholarship to Hertford College, Oxford. At Ashby he had met Mary Provost, who was a friend of the headmaster’s daughter; she had also secured a place at Oxford and so they travelled up together in October 1943. His degree studies were interrupted by second world war service in the RAF, but when he returned he and Mary, by then a history teacher, were married.
Fred completed his degree in philosophy, politics and economics after the war and became an extramural tutor in economics, teaching working men at evening classes in the Kent coalfield. He then moved to teach in adult education at Nottingham University. His boss there was Harold Wiltshire, a key figure on the planning committee for the creation of the Open University, and Fred became involved in some of that work. He also presented an early half-hour OU television programme on Sunday mornings about applied economics – which his family called “The Fred Show”. His experience at Nottingham working with shop stewards in adult education – as well as his reputation for integrity and hard work – eventually gained him a secondment to the National Board for Prices and Incomes, which then became a permanent post.
Fred was that rare mixture – an intellectual who was also deeply practical. He was a lifelong gardener and often argued that “I do my best thinking on the allotment”. Two summers ago he grew his best maize crop ever and distributed more than 60 corn cobs to friends, neighbours and family in Lewes, Sussex, where he lived for the last 15 years of his life.
Fred’s other daughter, my sister Polly, died of cancer in 2001, and Mary died in 2013. He is survived by me and by his two grandchildren, Hattie and Charlie.
