Labour Rights Index

Who needs to use it and why?

The Labour Rights Index is essentially directed at governments and international organisations, targeting trade union federations, multilateral organisations and national level organisations like government agencies. However, most of all, the Index can be used by workers. The importance of labour legislation cannot be overemphasised since well-drafted and inclusive laws are still a precondition for attaining decent work.

National scores can be used as starting points of negotiations and reforms by civil society organisations. Ratings can be made prerequisites for international socio-economic agreements to ensure compliance with labour standards, similar to EU's GSP+ and USA’s GSP which require compliance in law and practice with certain labour standards in order to avail certain trade benefits through reduced tariffs. 

The Labour Rights Index is also a useful benchmarking tool that can be used in stimulating policy debate as it can help in exposing challenges and identifying best practices. The Index provides meaningful input into policy discussions to improve labour market protections at the country level. 

The Labour Rights Index is a repository of “objective and actionable” data on labour market regulation along with the best practices which can be used by countries worldwide to initiate necessary reforms. The comparative tool can also be used by Labour Ministries for finding the best practices within their own regions and around the world.

The history of the Index

It was way back in 2009, when a Pakistani scholar from Cornell University reached me online. He identified himself as Iftikhar Ahmad, student of comparative labour law, and wanted to know why Pakistan was not among the 50-odd countries we were working in at the time. Well, simply because we have not yet found a suitable counterpart in the country, my standard answer must have been. 'Could he not qualify?', Iftikhar wrote back. He liked what we were doing, he said, and he also wanted to dedicate his working life to the interests of the common working man, woman and family. He was studying at Cornell and would return home to Islamabad, where he would restart working as a career civil servant for the Pakistani Government. So, indeed, why not, I mused. Let’s give it a try. And that is how we embarked on an adventurous and truly rewarding partnership that, 10 years later, has culminated into the first comprehensive Labour Rights Index with global outreach, covering 115 countries in 2020 - and counting. 

Over the past decade, Iftikhar and I have had at least a thousand online conversations and - when travelling was still easy - at least a dozen meetings in Islamabad, Amsterdam, Geneva and some other places where and when our work brought us together. Iftikhar, a methodical and systematic thinker with a strong bent for research, had recognized that we, at WageIndicator, collected data on wages and labour rights in a highly structured way. Our common systems approach provided the framework and directed our mutual brain picking. This happy meeting of inquisitive minds is the second crucial strand in our enduring cooperation - next to our shared drive that the work we do should benefit the working man and woman of meagre means, who make up the public at large in any country.

It so happened that the Decent Work Check, a nascent tool, that we at WageIndicator had been experimenting with (online and in print) in rural Africa and Central America, became the hub of our intense and intensifying exchanges. After much initial tampering, sculpting and a lot of scrutinizing, it today stands as the legal backbone of our pioneering Labour Rights Index 2020 and would continue to do so for its future editions. Moreover, our mature Decent Work Check proves to be of great value for national WageIndicator websites in 115 countries, and also in WageIndicator projects at the factory and plantation level in Indonesia, Ethiopia and Uganda, empowering (female) garment workers and flower growers.

I look forward to our continued cooperation with Iftikhar and his team at the Centre for Labour Research, along the lines that have brought us - and many others - so much: professionally, intellectually and as friends.

Paulien Osse, Director WageIndicator Foundation (November 2020)