This new report provides a framework within which to assess compliance with core
international labor standards and succeeds in taking an enormous step toward interpreting
all relevant information into one central database. At the request of the
Bureau of International Labor Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor, the National
Research Council's Committee on Monitoring International Labor Standards was
charged with identifying relevant and useful sources of country-level data, assessing
the quality of such data, identifying innovative measures to monitor compliance,
exploring the relationship between labor standards and human capital, and making
recommendations on reporting procedures to monitor compliance. The result of the
committee'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 monitor
compliance with core labor standards. The report provides a comprehensive
review 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.


Table of Contents


Front Matter
Executive Summary
1 Introduction and Overview
2 Official and Nongovernmental Sources of Information
3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems
4 Freedom of Association and the Right to Collective Bargaining
5 Forced or Compulsory Labor
6 Child Labor
7 Discrimination
8 Acceptable Conditions of Work
9 Human Capital and International Labor Standards Compliance
Appendix A: Database Description
Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members