Gaps in basic workers' rights: Measuring international adherence to and implementation of the Organization's values with public ILO data

Several ILO colleagues recently began work on Decent Work indicators. Almost invariably, they ran into problems capturing comprehensively what is at the very centre of the ILO and Decent Work, the standards that the Organization has set over the years in the labour field, or they left aside standards altogether. This irked me sufficiently, late last year, to try my hand at putting forward some ideas. Little did I know what I let myself in for. A number of my colleagues in the International Labour Standards Department were aghast at hearing of the simplifications that indicators would introduce without paying attention to the substance and details of everything specialists look at.