Measuring Legal Segmentation in Labour Law

Abstract

The Standard Employment Relationship (SER) in industrialised countries is associated with strong protection for employees who fulfil its criteria, but tends to neglect those who do not. However, comparative quantitative research in labour law so far has mainly focused on the overall level of employment protection in the North-Western Hemisphere. We ask how legal segmentation in labour law, i.e. the exclusion from and gradation in employment protection, can be conceptualised and measured in a global perspective. Drawing on leximetrics, a method to quantify norms, we make use of and extend existing datasets such as the CBR-LRI and EPLex. We identify three main functions of individual employment law in the protection/segmentation context: the standard-setting (S), privileging (P), and equalising (E) function. Assuming that the three functions are mutually independent, we develop the SPE typology - a typology of employment law models. Building on that, we sketch out a measurement concept that breaks the functions down into dimensions, aspects, and 36 observable indicators that are informed by specific legal norms. The SPE typology offers a genuinely new perspective for comparative labour regulation research, allowing a differentiation of SER patterns and path dependencies. The collection of data for 151 countries partly back to 1880 expands existing datasets conceptually, geographically, and historically.