Multinational Enforcement of Labor Law: Experimental Evidence on Strengthening Occupational Safety and Health Committees
中文摘要
每年，工作相关死亡占全球死亡总数的5%–7%，且至少每9名劳动者中就有1人遭遇非致命性职业事故（ILO (2019a,b)）。职业安全与健康（OSH）委员会被视为改善工作场所安全与健康的关键劳动者发声机构（ILO (1981)）。本文提供了OSH委员会对劳动者和工厂产生因果效应的证据。为此，我与29家跨国服装采购商合作，这些采购商承诺推动其孟加拉国供应商执行当地关于设立OSH委员会的强制规定。我与这些采购商共同在84家供应商工厂开展了一项历时近一年的实地实验，随机对其中一半工厂强制执行该规定。采购商的干预提高了对OSH委员会法律的合规性。利用OSH委员会强度的实验性变异，我发现更强的OSH委员会对客观安全指标产生了较小的正向影响。这些改善并未以劳动者的工资或就业为代价，也未以工厂的劳动生产率为代价。对于管理实践较好的工厂，其在合规性、安全与发声方面的效应最大。管理实践较差的工厂并未得到改善，且这些工厂的劳动者报告了更低的工作满意度；这一发现表明，外部执法与内部能力在决定监管成效方面存在互补性。
Abstract
Annually, work‐related mortality is responsible for 5–7% of all global deaths, and at least 1‐in‐9 workers experience nonfatal occupational accidents (ILO (2019a,b)). Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) committees are considered the key worker voice institution through which to improve workplace safety and health (ILO (1981)). I present evidence of OSH committees' causal effects on workers and on factories. To do so, I collaborated with 29 multinational apparel buyers that committed to enforce a local mandate for OSH committees on their suppliers in Bangladesh. With the buyers, I implemented a nearly year‐long field experiment with 84 supplier factories, randomly enforcing the mandate on half. The buyers' intervention increased compliance with the OSH committee law. Exploiting the experimental variation in OSH committees' strength, I find that stronger OSH committees had small, positive effects on objective measures of safety. These improvements did not come at a cost to workers in terms of wages or employment or to factories in terms of labor productivity. The effects on compliance, safety, and voice were largest for factories with better managerial practices. Factories with worse practices did not improve, and workers in these factories reported lower job satisfaction; this finding suggests complementarity between external enforcement and internal capacity in determining the efficacy of regulation.