Critiquing the OECD’s Employment Protection Legislation Index for individual dismissals: The importance of procedural requirements

Mark Harcourt, Gregor Gall, Arjun Sree Raman, Helen Lam and Richard Croucher
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Mark Harcourt: University of Waikato, New Zealand
Gregor Gall: University of Leeds, UK
Arjun Sree Raman: Nirvana Health Group, New Zealand
Helen Lam: Athabasca University, Canada
Richard Croucher: Middlesex University, UK

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2021, vol. 42, issue 4, 1210-1231

Abstract: Key EU agencies have successfully urged member states to scale back employment protection legislation as a solution to unemployment. The economic arguments for this reform are mixed, with recent empirical evidence largely unsupportive. Critics have also raised doubts about the accuracy of the OECD’s Employment Protection Legislation Index, which is the principal method EU agencies use to target so-called high-protection regimes. This article supplements existing criticisms of the OECD index by arguing that it fails to account for procedural requirements in assessing the difficulties and costs of carrying out individual dismissals. Evidence from New Zealand, ostensibly a low-protection country, demonstrates procedural requirements can pose the main impediments to carrying out individual dismissals. This suggests the need for revision of the OECD Employment Protection Legislation Index or the use of other indices instead.

Keywords: Employee rights; labour legislation; organisational justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:42:y:2021:i:4:p:1210-1231

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X19856411

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