Empleo Decente

Decent work: concepts, models and indicators

The main purpose of the reading is to consider and evaluate indicators of decent work in the light of its major components and its applicability to both industrialized and developing countries.
Ghai starts off by stating how the decent work approach is a useful framework, by which the ILO tries to integrate several elements of work thathistorically have been analyzed separately. The four elements in consideration are: employment, social security, workers´ rights and social dialogue. While the first two are related to opportunities, remuneration, security and conditions of work, the two last two focus on the social relations of workers. Consequently, as the former deal more with economic development, the latter mainly have to do withlegislation and administration.
Given the fact that this approach was designed basically to capture and assess the work scene in the developed world, Ghai briefly reflects on the importance of the diversity of institutional and structural diversity among countries, for what he cites three different models of decent work: the classical, the transitional and the development. For each one, the level ofachievement in different aspects of economic structure determines the attainment of decent work objectives. Such aspects are accordingly to Ghai: income per head; sectoral distribution and employment status of the labour force; government expenditure and revenue as a proportion of GDP and; share of the public sector in productive assets and total output. In the classical model are grouped the mostdeveloped countries, where all of the previous economic aspects are in very good shape. In the transitional model are most of the central and east European countries moving from central planned states to market economies, where income per capita falls in the middle category, informal economy has increased and government expenditure means a fairly high proportion of GDP. In the development modelis where the all the global south is packed up, where so many disparities and ranges can be found that no real generalizations can be made.
In this scenario, Ghai poses the question of whether decent work can actually be a concept of universal validity. His answer, is that while the objectives behind decent work retain universal validity (¿who would not want something called decent work?) theircontent and the mechanisms for attainment must be adapted to countries´ structural and institutional characteristics. After this, the real discussion over indicators begins.
1. Indicators of employment
Ghai identifies three key elements of the employment dimension: employment opportunities; remuneration and; working conditions.
For employment opportunities the most common measures are labourforce participation rates, employment-to-population ratios and unemployment rates. For remunerative employment it is not possible to specify an absolute measurement, because it may vary according to societal values and material prosperity of each country. For developing countries however, a good proxy would be provided by data on absolute poverty (national poverty lines). Regarding workingconditions, the main reference is to occupational safety and health, even though it also includes aspects such as number of working hours or weakly rest and paid leave. The most commonly used indicator is number of accidents and deaths at work.
2. Indicators of social security
This aspect is regarded to account to meet urgent needs for subsistence and to provide against contingencies such asunemployment, sickness, destitution in old age, maternity and disability. In the classical model two indicators are widely used: public expenditure on social security as a proportion of GDP (which says nothing about the effectiveness of the use of resources) and adequacy of coverage of workers regarding the contingencies outlined above.
3. Indicators of workers’ rights
This aspects is broken down into...