New labour rights indicators: Method and trends for 2000–15

• Author: Dora SARI,David KUCERA
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12084
• Date: 01 September 2019

International Labour Review, Vol. 158 (2019), No. 3

Copyright © The authors 2019

Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2019

* ILO, Employment Policy Department, email: kucera@ilo.org. ** Harvard Law School,

Labor and Worklife Program, email: dsari@law.harvard.edu. The authors would like to express

their thanks to the Center for Global Workers’ Rights at Penn State University, the Global La-

bour University and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung for their nancial support; to the experts par-

ticipating in the Delphi survey for their time and dedication; to the colleagues who contributed

to the coding: Vida Amirmokri, Loredana Carta, Katiuscia Galhera, Bahareh Mahdavi, Valé-

rie Prévost Tanguay, Zhihang Ruan, Makbule Sahan, Ángela Sanchez and Paul Vincent White-

head; to Magnus Berge, Tandiwe Gross and Frank Hoffer for their overall support throughout

the project; to Bjørn Sandvik and Thematic Mapping for their exceptional work on the Labour

Rights Indicators webpage; and to Karen Curtis for her contribution to the construction of the

evaluation criteria and for giving precision to their denitions. Lastly, the authors would like

to give special thanks to Mark Anner, Director of the Center for Global Workers’ Rights, who

played an instrumental role in the realization of the project, both in terms of providing an in-

stitutional home for the indicators and by lending invaluable support and expertise at every

stage of the work.

Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors,

and publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

New labour rights indicators:

Method and trends for 2000–15

David KUCERA* and Dora SARI**

Abstract. This article describes a new method for constructing indicators of free-

dom of association and collective bargaining (FACB) rights based on the coding

of violations in nine textual sources, including six from the ILO, and texts from na-

tional legislation. The indicators were constructed for 185 ILO member States for

ve years between 200 0 and 2015 and launched in 2015 by the Center for Global

Workers’ Rights at Penn State University, together with the Global Labour Uni-

versity. Following a Resolution by the International Conference of Labour Statisti-

cians in October 2018, the method provides the basis for Sustainable Development

Goal indicator 8.8.2 on labour rights.

In order to undertake statistical analysis of the relationship between inter-

national labour standards and foreign direct investment and international

trade, Kucera (2002 and 2007) developed a method for constructing country-

level indicators of trade union rights. The method was based on coding vio-

lations recorded in textual sources and endeavoured to apply the denitions

of freedom of association and collective bargaining (FACB) rights embodied

in the ILO Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise

Convention, 1948 (No. 87), and the Right to Organise and Collective Bargain-

ing Convention, 1949 (No. 98). In spite of its limitations, the method continues

International Labour Review420

to be fairly widely used among researchers. In their survey of related indica-

tors, Peels and Develtere (2009) conclude “that so far the Kucera dataset on

FACB rights is the best option if one wants to measure the policy involvement

of trade unions. The main reasons are its extensive country coverage, its focus

on FACB rights and more in particular on de facto FACB rights, and the high

transparency in methodology” (p.341).

In his survey of related indicators constructed for the US Department of

Labor, Barenberg provides useful criticisms of the Kucera method and concludes:

In any event, Kucera’s methodology stands as the leading effort to measure com-

pliance with freedom of association and collective bargaining rights … in light of

social scientists’ use of the methodology. The American Political Science Review,

as recently as November 2009, published an article by Greenhill et al., using

Kucera’s methodology in modeling the trade-based diffusion of labor rights

(Greenhill et al., 2009). For another use of Kucera’s methodology by political

scientists, see Mosley et al. (20 07). (2011, p. 56)

In an effort to address some of the shortcomings of the Kucera (2002 and

2007) method, Sari and Kucera (2011) developed an alternative coding scheme,

which provides the foundation for our new method of constructing what we

refer to as labour rights (LR) indicators. In comparison with the Kucera (200 2

and 2007) method, our new method codes nine rather than just three textual

sources and thus makes full use of the textual sources available through the

ILO’s supervisory system, as well as coding national legislation and other re-

lated reports. It furthermore applies distinct evaluation criteria for violations

of FACB rights in law (de jure) and in practice (de facto) and places greater

emphasis on violations of FACB rights with regard to due process and viola-

tions committed against trade union ofcials. It eliminates catch-all evaluation

criteria, such as “Other de jure acts of prohibitions, infringements and interfer-

ence” or “Other de facto acts of prohibitions, infringements and interference”.

As a result, it increases the number of evaluation criteria from 37 to 108 and

introduces more comprehensive denitions of what constitutes a violation of

each of these. Another innovation is the use of the Delphi method of expert

consultation to derive weights for each of the evaluation criteria. However,

perhaps most fundamentally, whereas the Kucera (2002 and 2007) method

was the work of an economist with essentially no legal knowledge, our new

method was developed in equal measure by a labour lawyer and an economist

working in close collaboration, using the coding conducted by labour lawyers

knowledgeable in the ILO’s supervisory system.

The new LR indicators are accompanied by a website hosted by the

Center for Global Workers’ Rights at Penn State University.1 The website

provides access to the indicators and the coding on which they are based and

allows users to approach the data from different entry points, depending on

their areas of interest. The website is constructed in such a way that indicators

for any given country and year can be readily traced to specic violations of

1 Available at: http://labour-rights-indicators.la.psu.edu/ [accessed 21 May 2019].