Call for Student Participation in Global Wage Collection
Students interested in a world wide operation charting wages and labor law in the service of individual workers, SME’s, unions and policy makers, attended a workshop on Monday March 12, at the School of Public Policy. It introduced the initiators of the (originally Dutch) WageIndicator Foundation, prof. Kea Tijdens and Mrs. Paulien Osse. In an informal setting they presented and debated their steady progress in creating freely accessible wage- and labor law databases and websites in - currently- 92 countries.
Against all odds (the internet bubble had just busted) they started from one modest website in the Netherlands in 2001, catering for the labor market information needs of working women only. Today WageIndicator databases and the national websites based on these data collections serve the ambitions of working individuals world wide. But as we all know, there are almost 200 independent states in the present world. Therefore, the end of WageIndicator expansion may be in sight, but the world’s labor markets are not fully covered as yet, and many suffer from the complete lack of easy to understand and free practical information that people need to take well-informed decisions, aimed at improving their working lives and prospects. WageIndicator may however be the vehicle to get to full coverage in the foreseeable future. All its online systems collect and elaborate wage and wage-related data (such as labor law basics) in a systematic and internationally comparable way, i.e. one system fits all.
The principles underlying the operations and the current research platform of WageIndicator were further elucidated in the presentations of Paulien Osse, director of the Foundation and its international web manager, and Kea Tijdens, research coordinator. In the ensuing discussion they opened the perspective and further elaborated their ambition to reach 150 countries in 2020. Explaining the non profit nature of the Foundation, but also the successful principle of voluntary data contribution made by web visitors over the years, students were invited to consider participating in the widening research strategy of WageIndicator. This strategy aims to reach the next - and by the strength of sheer numbers - irreversible stage in becoming the world’s leading standard of international wage- and labor law comparisons.
The workshop was organized under the auspices of prof. Martin Kahanec.