Worlds of Labour: Introducing the Standard-Setting, Privileging and Equalising Typology as a Measure of Legal Segmentation in Labour Law

Abstract

The Standard Employment Relationship (SER) in industrialised countries is associated with strong protection for employees who fulfil its criteria but tends to neglect those who do not. Although the theoretical concept of SER has had repercussions around the world, its global empirical incidence and the variation of regulatory patterns associated with it have not been scrutinised so far. Comparative quantitative research in labour law has mainly focused on the overall level of employment protection in the countries of the Northern Hemisphere. Against this background, we ask how legal segmentation in labour law, that is, the exclusion from and gradation in employment protection which seems to be connected with the SER, can be conceptualised and measured in a global perspective. Drawing on leximetrics, a method to measure and quantify norms, we make use of and extend existing data sets such as the Centre for Business Research Labour Regulation Index (CBR-LRI) and Employment Protection Legislation Index (EPLex) in order to grasp the nature of legal segmentation. We identify three main functions of individual employment law in the protection/segmentation context: the standard-setting (S), the privileging (P) and the equalising (E) functions. We develop the SPE-employment law model on the assumption that the three functions are mutually independent in normative terms. The SPE typology offers a genuinely new perspective for comparative labour regulation research, making it possible to see the differentiation of patterns of legal segmentation and their path dependencies in 115 countries. First findings on a global scale show that in 2013 no fundamental difference between the levels of regulation in the Global South and North can be found. Moreover, familiar patterns can be observed such as a tendency to stable and low protection levels in liberal welfare states, and a tendency to universalist types of regulation in former socialist countries.

From Geneva to the World? Global Network Diffusion of Antidiscrimination Legislation in Employment and Occupation: The ILO’s C111

“…Finally, the national equality index maps the annually averaged de jure strength value of national antidiscrimination law equivalent to the different dimensions of the ILO's international antidiscrimination convention C111. It is calculated from six indicators of the WoL dataset 5 (Dingeldey et al 2021), which quantify the dimensions of antidiscrimination considered in the C111. The values vary between 1 ("legally guaranteed") and 0 ("no such guarantee exist"), with downward gradations indicating limited guarantees, weaker recommendations, or the non-inclusion and non-regulation of subareas of the antidiscrimination idea according to C111.…”

Legal segmentation in China, India, Malaysia and Viet Nam

“…On the other hand, labour regulation has also sought to counteract segmentation through supportive measures targeted at vulnerable groups. Dingeldey et al (2021) have mapped how labour regulation pulls in these different directions by examining three different functions: standard-setting, privileging and equalizing. The standard-setting function operates through legal norms that limit employer power, particularly in relation to working time and termination of employment (Dingeldey et al 2021, 12-13).…”

Segmentación legal del trabajo en China, la India, Malasia y Viet Nam

“…Las peculiaridades lingüísticas y conceptuales se analizan en la medida en que son parte integrante de esa cuestión. El análisis de la segmentación legal adoptará la forma de una descripción y no de una codificación, puesto que esta última ya se ha realizado (Dingeldey et al 2021).…”

“…El resto del artículo se organiza como sigue. En la segunda sección se ofrece un breve resumen del marco teórico de la segmentación legal desarrollado por Dingeldey et al (2021). En la tercera sección se examina cómo el contexto jurídico laboral de los países asiáticos en desarrollo afecta al análisis de la segmentación legal, el cual se aplicará después a las jurisdicciones seleccionadas, explorando los límites tanto en torno al ámbito de aplicación de la reglamentación laboral como dentro del mismo.…”