Expanding the reach and influence of labour laws is among the central challenges of contemporary labour regulation. Formal legal standards do not reach all workers. They may influence only a small percentage of the working population in countries with large informal economies.
New research on labour regulation, however, is highlighting ‘institutional dynamism’: the capacity of labour law systems to (1) extend beyond their formal parameters, including to informal settings and (2) interact with other institutions e.g. collective bargaining.
Our Project, ‘Law’s Dynamic Effects: The Case of South Africa’ is a doctrinal and qualitative examination centring around the National Minimum Wage Act in South Africa.
Institutional dynamism is a potential gateway to improved protective outcomes. It has particular potential for the regulation of UFW in low-income settings - by extending the reach of legislated standards without costly investgments in labour inspection and enforcement. Yet the operation of law's dynamics effects needs further investigation.
The Strategic Network on Legal Regulation of Unacceptable Forms of Work has designed a set of Research Agendas on combatting unacceptable work. The Research Agenda on Law's Dynamic Effects (see below) proposes a research strategy to investigate how institutional dynamism can be incorporated into decent work policies.
The Research Agenda has been designed by a Strategic Network Team that includes researchers and policy actors from across the world:
Comparative research on regulatory frameworks is crucial to combat UFW. It can provide global lessons from innovations in different countries. For this reason, the Network Team on Law's Dynamic Effects suggests that comparisons should focus on the most globallly-significant legal innovations to combat UFW.
As an illustration, three key interventions have recently been introduced in Viet Nam, Argentina, and New Zealand: a minimum wage-setting framework in Viet Nam, the extension of minimum wage rights to the informal sector in Argentina, and legislation to curb 'zero hours contracts' in New Zealand.
These countries are diverse in socio-economic development, legal systems and economic development and labour marekt strategies. Yet they have potential to generate lessons on innovative legal techniques in UFW regulation. Each is attempting to introduce legal regulation into arenas previously unregulated by formal norms. To be considered effective, the new norms would need to embed in working practices and extend across the economy, inclduing in the most vulnerable sectors.
For further details, see our global research agenda on Laws Dynamic Effects.
The agenda identifies a set of key resarch questions:
The project on Law's Dynamic Effects: The Case of South Africa (2019-) investigates the dynamic effects of labour law with a focus on South Africa's new National Minimum Wage Act.
The project is being conducted by Sufia Singlee and is supervised by Professor Deirdre McCann (Durham Law School, Durham University) and Dr Siobhan McGrath (Department of Geography, Durham University).
