Knowledge Exchange Seminar Series: Beyond the law-in-the books: Labour enforcement in Senegal

Existing research often assumes that the letter of labour codes is an adequate proxy for effective regulation. This presentation empirically shows that such an assumption makes little sense for Senegal. We collect new objective measures of private and public labour enforcement, including workers’ awareness of their rights, access to the judiciary, penalties, and labour inspection resources and activities. We document that Senegal, as well as other countries in Francophone West Africa, is characterised by a combination of protective/stringent in-form labour codes and little enforcement efforts. Furthermore, we show that labour inspections target large and registered firms, while labour violations are more prevalent in small and unregistered firms, implying that the problem is substantially more complex than a lack of public inspection funding. We speculate it is mostly about the lack of effective representation of vulnerable workers in the policymaking process.

This Knowledge Exchange Seminar is facilitated by the ILO Research Department as a platform for dissemination of research findings and exchange of ideas. The views expressed in this seminar are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the ILO nor of its constituents.

Видео Knowledge Exchange Seminar Series: Beyond the law-in-the books: Labour enforcement in Senegal канала International Labour Organization