Working papers

  1. Working Paper No. 59 - Social Dialogue Indicators: Trade Union Membership and Collective Bargaining Coverage, Statistical Concepts, Methods and Findings

    01 January 2005

    This working paper discusses the main methodological considerations and some preliminary findings from social dialogue indicators, taking into account the variety of industrial relations systems. It documents the concepts and methods relating to the social dialogue indicators of trade union membership and collective bargaining coverage collected by the joint project during 2003 and 2004.

  2. Working Paper No. 58 - Decent work, standards and indicators

    01 December 2005

    This paper presents a highly detailed and comprehensive method for constructing country profiles based on normative indicators as a tool for progress towards decent work. Country profiles on occupational safety and health (OSH) are available for a large number of countries.

  3. Working Paper No. 57 - Trade unions and informal workers' associations in the urban informal economy of Ecuador

    01 December 2005

    This paper, which forms part of a knowledge-sharing project on the informal economy, provides thought-provoking insights into the situation of Brazil workers in the context of urban Ecuador. Based on interviews, this paper examines ways to increase the voice and representation of informal economy actors as necessary steps in combating poverty

  4. Working Paper No. 56 - Statistical indicators of social dialogue: A compilation of multiple country databases

    01 December 2005

  5. Working Paper No. 55 - The pattern of globalization and some implications for the pursuit of social goals.

    01 January 2005

    This paper explore some of the ways in which globalization might better serve social goals, drawing on the work of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization. The author stresses the challenges posed by the disparity between countries in terms of levels of development and individuals in terms of levels of income.

  6. Working Paper No. 54 - Indicators of labour standards: An overview and comparison

    01 January 2005

    This paper proposes a methodology to measure differences in labour standards across countries. This methodology is used in a crossed country comparison developed to address both legal and labour market outcome aspects of a wide range of labour standards (minimum wages, social security…).

  7. Working Paper No. 53 - Measuring the informal economy : From employment in the informal sector to informal employment

    01 January 2005

    The purpose of the present working paper is first to explain the international statistical definitions of employment in the informal sector and of informal employment (adopted by the ICLS in 1993 and 2003). The second target of this paper is to illustrate the practical application in household surveys of these definitions in providing examples of their translation into survey questions.

  8. Working Paper No. 52 - Child Labour, Education and Export Performance

    01 January 2004

    Including data for up to 162 countries, the paper uses a gravity trade model to estimate the effects of child labour and education on exports for the 1993 to 1999 period. This paper argues that there are two rather separate markets for unskilled labour, and children work in the less skilled of developing countries which is of limited relevance for the trade of manufactures.

  9. Working Paper No. 51 - Patterns of Job Quality Attributes in the European Union

    01 January 2005

    The objective of this paper is to exploit The European Survey of Working Conditions (ESWC), which offers an unusual opportunity to address questions about a wide range of job characteristics such as workplace safety, stress, workplace relations and asocial hours. A second objective is to explore the link between job characteristics and “outcomes” such as pay and other employment conditions.

  10. Working Paper No. 50 - Measuring trade union rights: A country-level indicator constructed from coding violations recorded in textual sources

    01 January 2004

    The paper argues that the key bottleneck in improving indicators of trade union rights is the need for information sources that provide systematic and detailed information on trade union rights that is consistent both across countries and over time.

  11. Working Paper No. 49 - The social dimension of regional integration in ECOWAS

    01 January 2005

    This paper highlights the avenues open to African regional economic communities to strengthen socio-economic development. Foremost among these is reinforcing social dialogue and the social partners for their effective engagement. The author makes suggestions as to how the ILO and other institutions could facilitate this process in ECOWAS, which is politically open to it.

  12. Working Paper No. 48 - Generating decent work for poverty reduction in Cambodia

    01 January 2005

    This paper highlights the key interlinked areas for policy action that would enhance the ability of the Cambodian economy to generate work, would improve the productivity and conditions of work of the working poor and would move towards removing structural social discrimination and protecting the most vulnerable.

  13. Working Paper No. 47 - Trends in Work Stoppages: A Global Perspective

    01 January 2004

    The paper describes in some detail the serious problems with missing strike activity data, with a large number of countries not collecting these data and a good many others collecting these data only intermittently. The paper makes recommendations as to the most cost-effective means of improving the collection of strike activity data.

  14. Working Paper No. 46 - Poverty reduction in Pakistan: The strategic impact of macro and employment policies

    01 January 2006

  15. Working Paper No. 45 - The world of work in the context of economic integration and trade liberalization

    01 January 2004

    This paper is a contribution to the growing body of work devoted to understanding the impact of regional economic integration on employers and workers. It compares these developments in the Americas with those in other parts of the world.

  16. Working Paper No. 44 - Women's access to occupations with authority, influence and decision making-power

    01 January 2005

  17. Working Paper No. 43 - Unemployment and Labour Market Institutions: The Failure of the Empirical Case for Deregulation

    01 January 2004

    This paper assesses the strength of the evidence regarding the effects of labour market institutions and regulations on unemployment, updating their earlier survey of the literature to include the most recent studies. The paper argues that the empirical results are largely inconclusive, often showing estimates of opposite sign.

  18. Working Paper No. 42 - Decent work in a least developed country: A critical assessment of the Ethiopia PRSP

    01 January 2004

    This paper describes how the ILO engages in PRSP processes and where decent work can add value to national poverty reduction strategies. Although the working paper is specific to the case of Ethiopia, many of the issues raised have broader relevance to national poverty reduction processes in other least developed countries, especially in Africa.

  19. Working Paper No. 41 - Employment in the informal economy in the Republic of Moldova

    01 January 2005

    In relation to the development of an employment survey, this paper produces statistics on employment in the informal economy in the Republic of Moldova. This paper contains an analysis of the main results obtained of the pilot survey and a statistical annex of tables with detailed data on employment in the informal sector and informal employment broken down by sex, urban/rural areas, branch of economic activity, occupations, status in employment and other variables.

  20. Working Paper No. 40 - Statistics on the employment situation of people with disabilities: A Compendium of national methodologies

    01 January 2004