Representation Security Index: Information

		Representation Security Index
Definition	Representation security is about having voice. This is an instrumental need, in that having Voice is the optimal way of advancing and defending an interest. But it is also a substantive need in its own right, since having a voice is intrinsic to defining one's identity as a human being. Voice is required for many purposes in the sphere of work, the most notable being to negotiate over wages, benefits and working conditions. It is also needed for monitoring working practices, for information-gathering, and for evaluating the impact of work practices or policies. Voice is essential at all levels of social policy, from design to implementation to monitoring and evaluation.
A Representation security index	To design a national index of representation security, it was decided to take a fairly conventional approach, focusing on standard aspects of freedom of association. As with other security indexes, there are sets of input indicators, process indicators and outcome indicators, which are combined into a single representation index.
Input indicators		Desirable input indicators should refer to the legal and regulatory framework, as well as the existence of collective bodies to which workers could belong. In essence, input indicators assess the formal commitment of the state to representation security. The input measures might include indicators such as whether or not the country has ratified well-established international freedom-of-association ''Conventions'', and whether or not there is a law allowing trade unions and making it easy for them to organize. They could also include measures of bargaining scope and freedom to bargain, freedom to strike, to picket and so on. Five input indicators were selected. Conventions: Convention 87: a value of 1 is given if the country has ratified Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association, and 0 otherwise; 1: Restricting hours of work Convention 98: a value of 1 is given if it has ratified Convention No. 98 on the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining, 0 otherwise; Convention 141: a value of 1 is given if it has ratified Convention No. 141 concerning Organizations of Rural Workers and their Role in Economic and Social Development, 0 otherwise. Laws Fourth, a value of 1 is given if the country's laws have no restriction on the type of union that can be formed. The reason for this is that national and sectoral unions provide a greater degree of collective representation than is possible when only local or plant-level unions are allowed. Fifth is the existence and coverage of a law on collective bargaining. This has three possible values, 0 if there is no law or other formal instrument on collective bargaining in the country, 1 if such a law exists but with a limited coverage, and 2 if there is a law with near-general coverage. Since we did not wish to give a disproportionate weight to the most formal and international components of the input index, the five input indicators are divided into two sets. The first set includes the three Convention ratification indicators and is given only half the weight of the second, which is the national law component.
Process indicators		Process indicators are mechanisms for strengthening voice; four indicators were selected. First, a value of 1 is given if there is a national tripartite board or council dealing with labour and social policies, 0 otherwise. Second, a value of 1 is given if the country's legislature allows non-governmental organizations to operate to promote worker interests, 0 otherwise. Third, a scale is used for the percentage of total employed covered by collective agreements, adjusted by multiplying the number by the percentage of the workforce in wage and salaried employment. In some countries, actual figures exist on this, but in many others the estimate is crude. Accordingly, we have had to use secondary information, and have estimated a five-point range (insignificant, low, medium, high, and very high). Last is the share of employees in total employment as a measure of the potential public for voice representation.
Outcome indicators		Devising appropriate outcome indicators is relatively difficult for representation security, and yet these deserve more weight in the overall index than either the input or the process indicators, privileging indicators on effectiveness over those on formal arrangements. Four indicators were selected. The standard outcome indicator of collective representation security is the unionization rate, i.e., the percentage of the workforce belonging to trade unions. Unfortunately, even assuming that it is a valid proxy for representation security, this is hard to measure satisfactorily. In some countries, the figure comes from the reports submitted by the unions themselves, in some it comes from sample surveys (the most reliable method, in principle) and in some it comes from establishment surveys. Estimated unionization rates are from the ILO’s World Labour Report and from the SES Primary Database. There are several conceptual and measurement difficulties, and there is much to be done to improve international data in this respect. What we have done is treat the very high figures recorded for ex-Soviet Union countries as misleadingly high, in part because until the late 1980s or early 1990s, all workers were required to belong to unions, formally at least. There is a legacy here, so we have halved the values for all of these countries — which still puts most of them in the high-level bracket. The unionization figures for all countries have also been adjusted by multiplying the recorded rate (or half it in the case of the ex-Soviet countries) by the percentage of the workforce in wage and salaried employment. Second, we use an estimate of the change in unionization during the 1990s. Because of data reliability and because we had to rely on “guesstimates” in a few cases, we put these estimated changes into several groups — big fall, small fall, little or no change, small increase and big increase. The most common outcome in the decade was a big fall in unionization, followed by countries with small declines. Third, we take the Civil Liberties Index developed by the non-profit organization Freedom House, which has a scale of 1 (highest in terms of freedom) down to 7. For the purposes of the representation index, the numbering is reversed, since larger numbers are given a greater weight. Finally, because an improving or deteriorating situation shapes security, a measure is included for the change in the Civil Liberties Index between 1990 and 1999, expressed as a ratio of the two values.
Coverage	Calculations were carried out for 99 industrial and industrializing countries for the year 1999.
Clusters	As expected, the Scandinavian countries and other western European countries have the highest scores. Top performers are Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. There are no ''Pacesetters'' in the Americas or Asia. Africa is the continent having the best-performing developing country, South Africa. It happens to have been one of the very few countries where the unionization rate rose quite strongly in the 1990s. Its position thus comes as little surprise. The only other non-western European country classified as a ''Pacesetter'' is Bulgaria. It has reached this position mainly due to its outstanding achievements in terms of the legislation and other norms established to guarantee and promote the voice representation of workers. The next best voice security providers - the ''Pragmatists'' - are mainly countries from the Americas, East Asia and Pacific, and the higher income eastern European countries plus the Russian Federation (Figure 10.6). Outsiders in this cluster, in decreasing order of security provision, are Switzerland, Mauritius, the Philippines and China. By contrast, almost two thirds of the countries have unsatisfactory levels of representation security, and over one in every two of these come under the ''Much-to-be-Done'' label. Almost all countries in Africa and the Middle East fall into either the ''Conventional'' or ?Much-to-be-done? categories. The latter group also includes large Asian countries such as India and Indonesia, and the Central Asian republics. The average performers - the ''Conventionals'' - come mostly from Africa and Latin America. Surprisingly, France and Greece also enter this cluster, the former mainly because it has a very low unionization rate and the latter because of a large decline in unionization over the 1990s.
Additional outputs	Factsheets: Security dimensions Weak Collective Voice leaves Workers Insecure: New forms of voice still limited Income Insecurity: Neglected aspects of poverty and inequality Labour Market Insecurity: Lost in global statistics Work Insecurity: Work-related ill health Employment Insecurity: Why neither formal nor informal my be best for workers Skills Insecurity: Why "human capital" will not do Regional perspective Africa: Insecurities compound poverty South and South-East Asia: Economic security exceedss income share Eastern Europe and CIS: Unpaid wages, lost benefits and concealed unemployment Latin America and the Caribbean: Lower and most unstable growth intensify insecurities - Huge majorities favour redistribution and basic security Economic Insecurities in Rich countries: Western Europe still sets lead, but slipping Transversal issues "Targeting" the Poor is Poor Policy: Support for security and equality strong Women face more Economic Insecurity

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