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This article explains the role of evidence in determining the recommendations made by the Low Pay Commission (LPC) for the National Minimum Wage (NMW). First, it sets out the process of recommending the minimum wage including the role of evidence. Second, it summarises the evidence available on the impact of the minimum wage before discussing how that evidence has informed the recommendations for the adult rate of the minimum wage in the LPC's reports. It concludes by assessing the extent to which the NMW might be regarded as a success and considers whether the recent financial crisis will alter the evidence-based approach so far adopted by the LPC.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is twofold. First to identify economic activities and broader spatial logistics functions that characterise an urban setting, and second to delineate significant spatial logistics employment clusters to represent the underlying regional geography of the logistics landscape.Design/methodology/approach– Using the four-digit Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification, industries "explicitly" related to logistics were identified and aggregated with respect to employment. A principal component analysis was conducted to capture the functional interdependence of inter-related industries and measures of spatial autocorrelation were also applied to identify spatial logistics employment clusters.Findings– The results show that the logistics sector accounts for 3.57 per cent of total employment and that road freight, postal services, and air and space transport are major employers of logistics managers. The research shows significant spatial clustering of logistics employment in the western and southern corridors of Melbourne, associated spatially with manufacturing, service industry and retail hubs in those areas.Research limitations/implications– This research offers empirically informed insights into the composition of spatial logistics employment clusters to regions that lack a means of production that would otherwise support the economy. Inability to measure the size of the logistics sector due to overlaps with other sectors such as manufacturing is a limitation of the data used.Practical implications– The research offers policymakers and practitioners an empirically founded basis on which decisions about future infrastructure investment can be evaluated to support cluster development and achieve economies of agglomeration.Originality/value– The key value of this research is the quantification of spatial logistics employment clusters using spatial autocorrelation measures to empirically identify and spatially contextualize logistics hubs.

Management has long concerned itself with controlling workers' bodies, with organisational wellness discourses being its latest fixation. This article's purpose is to introduce and understand 'whose body counts' – a discourse of bodily exceptionalism in performative organisational cultures. Using ethnographic methods, this article presents an analysis of a CrossFit workplace health promotion at an underperforming US corporation, to identify a complex process of empowerment, self-exploitation and disciplinary regulation to produce performative outcomes. This research illustrates how the workplace health promotion generates a pervasive discourse of exceptionalism underpinned by workers' reflexive exploitation, overarched by peer-surveillance and reflexively embraced through extreme individualised performativities. Critically, it is revealed how individuals competitively engage in communicative labour to demonstrate devotion to self-care that is translated into organisational commitment. Specifically, unquestioned discursive ambiguities are shown to cunningly empower limitlessness meritocratic striving that pits workers against each other, creating constant negotiation of 'whose body counts' by subjugating others.