7 Gains for Every Setback: Global Labour Rights Advance, finds Labour Rights Index 2026

7 improvements for every setback

Between 1 January 2024 and 1 January 2026, WageIndicator’s labour law researchers registered 134 legal changes across 70 countries. Leaving aside Minimum Wage revisions, 38 reforms raised a component score, while another 60 strengthened the law without changing the score. Most reforms came in family responsibilities, maternity protection and equal opportunity and treatment, followed by working time and employment security.

At the same time, there was a regression in some areas as well. Nine changes to laws lowered a component score, and four weakened protection without affecting it. For instance, new working time rules lowered scores in Egypt, India, and Lesotho, even as those same countries improved elsewhere. To sum up, there are more than seven strengthening reforms for every setback.

Still, progress remains even. While almost half (49.94%) of the population covered by the index lives in countries rated "Reasonable Access to Decent Work", about 36% still lives in countries rated "Limited Access to Decent Work" or worse. Among regions, Europe averages 92 and South Asia 58, a gap of 34 points.

Freedom of association and collective bargaining has the lowest average indicator score, about 41.

An improved methodology

The 2026 Index is more tightly linked to United Nations Human Rights Treaties and not just the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions. For the first time, the index also draws upon the supervisory reports of ILO’s Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR) and the Committee on Freedom of Association’s Digest of Decisions.

It adds three components: childcare services, the right to refuse dangerous work, and social dialogue, which ensures that workers and employers are consulted on labour law reforms and labour market regulation. On platform work, the index now checks whether a platform worker's status depends on the real nature of their work and not whether their contract calls them employees or independent contracts. The forced labour assessment now looks at whether prison, maritime, strike or national service laws reopen routes to compulsory labour, and whether victims have effective remedies.

To be sure, a march to the top in legislation is not a march to the top in workers’ lived experience or their lived realities, explains Ahmad. Other data bear this out. The ITUC Global Rights Index 2026 finds the right to strike was violated in 87% of countries, and the WJP Rule of Law Index 2025 reports that freedom of assembly and association declined in 72% of countries.

"Law is not the destination, it is only the foundation," Ahmad said. "Without implementation, rights remain promises on paper. But without a right in the law, there's nothing to implement, enforce, or claim."

What the experts said

At a panel discussion during the launch, Jean-Michel Servais, President of the International Society for Labour and Social Security Law and a former director of the International Labour Office, called the Index "a treasure." He warned against a purely word-to-word comparison of laws since the same terms and institutions (for eg: a tribunal) differ across legal cultures. A possible solution, he suggested, is to start from a common problem and use international labour and human rights standards, which is what the Index does.

Lena Simet, Senior Advisor on Economic Justice at Human Rights Watch, said that she was struck by the finding that 142 countries out of 168 already have a legal route in place adhering to ILO Convention 193. Convention 193 establishes a framework to ensure that all digital workers, regardless of how their employers classify their status, can benefit from fundamental labour rights and protection.

“I would be very curious to see comparatively how many governments are already thinking about ways in which we need new laws and protections as we see more companies incorporate automated decision making into their work and into management systems<” said Simet.

Saurabh Bhattacharjee, Associate Professor of Law at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, called for thinking deeply about a couple of issues to make the index more inclusive – one, the workforce that falls outside the legal definition of the standard worker to whom labour laws typically apply, and two, capturing the experiences of different parts of a country in a federal setup where laws might be different in various provinces.

Laura Alfers of WIEGO said: "Labour law needs to start with the worker rather than only the employee. The absence of an employer should not mean the absence of rights at work."

She also called for looking “at who shapes that worker’s conditions and build legal frameworks around that. So, for a street vendor, this might be the municipality controlling trading space, their access to permits, and urban infrastructure. We need to give workers a practical way to negotiate with these actors.”

Jan Cremers, independent expert on the Management Board of the European Labour Authority, stressed fair recruitment: "If the recruitment is wrong, then you can almost predict that the treatment of workers later on will be quite problematic."

“The issue of enforcement deserves more attention also, let’s say, next to the… collection of big data that is, of course, very relevant, and in such a situation, comparative data can become a key instrument for the assessment of genuine activities and fair treatment,” he added.

In his closing remarks, Professor Martin Kahanec of Central European University said: The labour rights index’s value is that it gives us a common comparative language," adding that "the real opportunity is to use [it] to ask better questions."