5 - The Overall Picture

Summary

The contrast between anecdotes of sweatshop labor and the actual development of labor conditions around the world is striking. (Flanagan 2006, 23).

In Chapter 3, I present several hypotheses linking labor rights outcomes with international economic and domestic political variables. The first two center upon the mixed effects of multinational production on labor rights outcomes: I predict that, all else equal, trade openness will be associated with greater violations of workers’ collective rights and that foreign direct investment will be positively linked with these same rights. The remaining hypotheses developed in Chapter 3 concern domestic economic and political dynamics: I expect fewer violations of collective rights in country-years characterized by democratic political regimes and left-leaning governments. Additionally, where labor market conditions are more favorable to workers, collective rights also should be better protected.

This chapter presents statistical analyses that assess these hypotheses using quantitative indicators of key variables for approximately ninety low- and middle-income nations and relying on annual observations during the 1986–2002 time frame. The dependent variable for these analyses is the newly developed indicator of overall labor rights as well as the disaggregated measures of labor rights in law and in practice. I estimate cross-sectional time series (CSTS) models. The late 1980s and 1990s are periods of growing – and often high – economic openness in which the impact of globalization on labor rights should be quite pronounced; these years also provide broad coverage for key variables.