Life Chances: Labor Rights, International Institutions, and Worker Fatalities in the Global South

Abstract

Hundreds of thousands of workers die on the job each year around the world, with disproportionately high fatality rates in the global South. Using fixed effects regression models for 51 countries located in the global South, this research examines how shifts in state context, ties to international organizations, and economic context affect worker fatalities from 1985 and 2002. We find that strengthening collective labor rights—the ability to protest and form worker organizations free from repression—is tightly linked to fewer fatalities. Certain forms of global institutional ties are related to workers’ deaths. Increased links to international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) are associated with fewer deaths. Ratification of International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, however, is decoupled from fatalities. We examine ratification of a specific safety convention, as well as general embeddedness in the ILO, as represented by ratification of the fundamental conventions. Finally, measures of economic globalization, Foreign Direct Investment and exports, have no significant relationship to fatalities, net of socio-political factors. To unpack the mechanisms underlying the quantitative results, we present three illustrations: construction workers in Uruguay, garment workers in Bangladesh, and miners in South Africa.

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