International Policy Group

Globalization has added a powerful new dimension to the link between development and the four dimensions of decent work--basic labour rights and standards, employment, socioeconomic security, and social dialogue. Pre-globalization, the mainstream view was that successful development would clearly imply progress on the two economic dimensions of decent work, namely employment and socioeconomic security. This would happen through the employment growth that is generated by a high and sustained rate of economic growth and the increased economic security and poverty-reduction that would occur as a result of steadily expanding opportunities for productive employment. Underlying this view was the two-sector growth model which saw development in terms of the steady expansion of the high-productivity modern sector and the concomitant shrinking of the low-productivity rural and informal sectors. This sectoral shift constituted the basic driving force for the expansion of the proportion of the labour force in ‘good jobs’. This in itself constituted an improvement in the average quality of employment. This process would then be intensified once the ‘turning point’ of the exhaustion of surplus labour was passed since real wages in the modern sector would then begin to rise. Both these effects of the sectoral shift were also seen as having a positive impact on labour standards in the sense of the quality of employment as well as socioeconomic security. Improvements in the latter would occur not only through the impact of fuller employment but also through the increasing proportion of the labour force that would enjoy the benefits of the mandatory social security that accompanies modern sector jobs. Yet further improvements in these two dimensions of decent work would also occur through improvements in the level and coverage of protective labour legislation and social security that rising living standards would permit.