Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information

This new report provides a framework within which to assess compliance with coreinternational labor standards and succeeds in taking an enormous step toward interpretingall relevant information into one central database. At the request of theBureau of International Labor Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor, the NationalResearch Council''s Committee on Monitoring International Labor Standards wascharged with identifying relevant and useful sources of country-level data, assessingthe quality of such data, identifying innovative measures to monitor compliance,exploring the relationship between labor standards and human capital, and makingrecommendations on reporting procedures to monitor compliance. The result of thecommittee''s work is in two parts—this report and a database structure. Together,they offer a first step toward the goal of providing an empirical foundation to monitorcompliance with core labor standards. The report provides a comprehensivereview of extant data sources, with emphasis on their relevance to defined labor standards,their utility to decision makers in charge of assessing or monitoring compliance,and the cautions necessary to understand and use the quantitative information.