ILO slams labour reforms, cutback on workers’ protection

WITH most countries of the world suffering dwindling revenues and balancing development becoming more challenging, most countries are cutting back on workers protection initiatives to drive growth.

A new report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) says there is no link between less protection for workers and stronger growth.
The ILO’s recent report, ‘World Employment and Social Outlook 2015: The Changing nature of jobs’, which analyzed data from 63 countries, including the most advanced economies, as well as selected African, Asian and Latin American countries, over the last 20 years, suggests that lowering protection for workers does not stimulate job growth.

Co-author of the report, Steven Tobin said: “Employment regulation can provide protection to workers without harming job creation.”

The research results showed how the relative strength of labour legislation in a specific country does not affect employment and unemployment rates – neither negatively nor positively. This finding is consistent across different econometric data as well as for advanced, emerging and developing countries.

Tobin added: “The report clearly shows that, if carefully designed, employment regulation can provide protection to workers without harming job creation,” says Steven Tobin, one of the authors of the report. In fact, a number of emerging and developing countries enhanced the protection of workers without harming job creation.”

The report stressed that what is urgently needed is to design regulation for the economic and labour market situation of a specific country.

Regulations that are too lax can be as counterproductive to economic growth, job creation, equality and social cohesion as those that are too stringent.