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The article focuses on analyzing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on domestic workers in Brazil, and it highlights the issues such as loss of employment, occupational health and safety risks, and violations of labor and human rights. It reports that the pandemic exacerbated existing social inequalities and legal exclusions, leading to widespread vulnerabilities among domestic workers, and it emphasizes the need to address the deficit of decent work to prevent similar crises in the future.

In customs preference schemes, prison labour is primarily viewed as unfair competition, to be rejected out of hand. This form of employment can, however, be understood differently, notably by considering the conditions under which it may constitute decent work, and by seeing it as a tool for rehabilitation. Following an in‐depth legal analysis, in which they compare the relevant standards of the ILO to EU and WTO customs regulations in the light of the capability approach, the authors call for the development of a set of rules drawing on several branches of law relating to prison labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) rating agencies, as non‐financial data providers, have become central actors in the field of responsible investment. Although research has explored the construction of ESG metrics, little is known about how agencies evaluate decent work. Building on the analysis of six rating agencies, this article investigates how these actors measure and assess companies' performance in terms of decent work and related areas and identifies the challenges they face in this endeavour. The authors seek to better understand the capacity of responsible investment and ESG ratings to promote and improve decent work within companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global production and trade organized in global value chains (GVCs) have structured labour governance and the conditions of work for multiple decades. Since the early 2000s, a series of new economic, technological and political disruptions, along with the current COVID‐19 global health pandemic, have accentuated critical concerns about the role of labour governance and the future of work in the global economy. The articles in this Special Issue address these themes through original industry and country case studies, using both longitudinal and comparative research designs and mixed methods to offer insights into a labour governance framework that will fit future GVCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors offer a contextualized analysis of judicial decisions rendered during 1971–2013 in Côte d'Ivoire, where domestic work is regulated by a general labour code. Assessments of those decisions, alongside qualitative interviews of institutional actors, elucidate how innovative practices were mainly derived from the code by attentive inspectors and by jurisprudence evolving to treat domestic work like any other. Yet limitations emanating from the inability to grapple with the specificity of domestic work are also identified. Reaffirming that the regulation of domestic work must embrace its duality (work like any other and work like no other), the authors conclude with a call for an international community of learning on decent work for domestic workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unacceptable forms of work (UFW) have been identified as an 'area of critical importance' for the ILO as it approaches its centenary. Yet there is currently no comprehensive elaboration of the dimensions, causes or manifestations of UFW. This article reports on a research project that has proposed such a framework. The article first investigates and reconceptualizes key discourses on contemporary work to identify their contribution to an analytically rigorous conception of UFW. It then outlines a novel Multidimensional Model that has been designed for use by local policy actors in identifying and targeting UFW in countries across a range of income levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important (if under-researched) feature of modern labour markets has been the growth of unpaid 'internships' and other forms of 'work experience'. These arrangements may reflect an understandable desire by jobseekers to gain a foothold in highly competitive job markets. But they can open up the possibility of exploitation, as businesses and non-profit organizations replace what might previously have been paid entry-level jobs, and may reduce social mobility. Reviewing the legal and policy responses of selected developed countries, the authors seek to lay the foundation for a more effective response to what has become a clear challenge to the objective of securing decent work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The MDG employment indicators suffer from major shortcomings, including measurement problems, inappropriate use of aggregate statistics, ambiguous interpretability, and assumptions that do not apply to developing countries. Based on this critique, the authors propose a new set of four indicators for productive employment and decent work, namely: the growth of labour value added per worker, the working poverty rate, the share of workers receiving less than an absolute minimum labour income, and the share of workers receiving less than 60 per cent of the median labour income. They demonstrate the empirical application of these indicators using the country cases of Uganda and Peru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on nine of the indicators identified by the ILO's 2008 Tripartite Meeting of Experts on the Measurement of Decent Work, the authors develop a questionnaire, supplemented by in-depth interviews, to assess job quality in the security, farming and hospitality industries in South Africa's Gauteng province. Their diagnostic tool differs from the standard ILO index in that it focuses on individual workers at industry level rather than conditions at country level. This approach, the authors argue, can be used to monitor progress towards decent work while enabling key actors at industry level to develop evidence-led strategies to overcome decent work deficits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global economic crisis has led to a sharp slowdown in growth and an even greater slowdown in employment creation. The resulting deterioration in the quality of employment has exacerbated the longer-term trend of rising inequality. Jobless growth has dampened output growth through a worsening income distribution. Wages are costs on the supply side but are also incomes on the demand side, so that profit-led growth and wage-led growth are complements, not substitutes. Thus, growth can create jobs, while added jobs can drive growth. More employment and better jobs can also mitigate rising inequality. If macroeconomic policies focus on fostering employment creation and supporting economic growth, rather than on price stability and balanced budgets, employment would revive growth and reduce inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

. While the WTO and Doha Development Round do not deal with labour issues - they leave this to the ILO - the main countries that conclude free trade agreements incorporate labour provisions, which vary in terms of stringency. Sanctions are rarely used, and fears that 'social clauses' would serve protectionist purposes have proved to be unfounded. Labour provisions are designed to meet a variety of sometimes conflicting goals, by means of different mechanisms aimed at improving labour practices and promoting Decent Work; the author makes a number of suggestions in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 18th International Conference of Labour Statisticians was convened at the end of 2008. Its agenda featured, inter alia, the measurement of working time, child labour, decent work, labour underutilization and volunteer work. Here, the author reports on conceptual and definitional innovations in these areas, especially in regard to the boundaries of the concept of work. One such innovation – particularly useful for the measurement of working time and child labour – is a move to take account of domestic work and volunteer work for households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses two contested issues of crucial importance to policy, namely: formal labour regulations as a cause of informal employment, and so-called "voluntary" informal employment. The authors provide theoretical overviews on both issues and an extensive survey of empirical studies on the effects of formal labour regulations on informal employment. The article closes with observations on the relevance of the ILO's four decent work objectives for informal employment and economic development, with particular emphasis on the significance of- and potential for - organizing workers in the informal economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]