The OECD/IDB indicators of employment protection legislation measure the procedures and costs involved in dismissing individuals or groups of workers and the procedures involved in hiring workers on fixed-term or temporary work agency contracts. The indicators have been compiled using IDB’s and the OECD’s own reading of statutory laws, collective bargaining agreements and case law. This database constitutes the first systematic approach to review and compare employment protection regulations in LAC, in a way that is also comparable with countries around the world.
For each country, Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) is described along 31 basic items which can be classified in three main areas: (i) protection of regular workers against individual dismissal; (ii) protection of regular workers against collective dismissal; and (iii) regulation of temporary forms of employment. For each item and country, legislation, case law, and collective agreements –in force at a specific date- are reviewed and used to assign scores on a scale from 0 to 6 (from the least to the most strict regulation).
Information on EPL in other countries and on the general OECD EPL methodology can be found in the OECD Employment Protection Database.