Conference Agenda

To protect workers' rights and promote safe and healthy working conditions, labour regulation must be appropriately enforced. This requires enforcement strategies which are both within the capacity of the regulatory agency to utilise, and which are able to achieve the desire regulatory outcome.

Theories of responsive regulation suggest that the regulatory agency should select the appropriate enforcement strategy. Braithwaite conceptualised enforcement strategies as a pyramid, with frequently used strategies (being less coercive, less interventionist, and cheaper) at the bottom with more coercive and expensive strategies higher up the pyramid. Bottom layer strategies could include information interventions such as the capacity to propagate "advice, information and persuasion".

There has, however, been little exploration as to when, why and how regulatory bodies with multiple regulatory strategies at their disposal utilise information interventions or evaluate their impact. Therefore, we know little about how information interventions are being used to move beyond the paradigm of "good idea, no impact".

This knowledge gap becomes more acute when we consider the importance of information interventions to regulatory agencies which lack a full complement of regulatory powers, such as Australia's Equality Commissions. Australia's Equality Commissions are unified by their legislatively stated goal to minimise prohibited discrimination, and the fact they can use a truncated pyramid of enforcement strategies which does not extend to coercion, punishment or sanction.

This paper will introduce current empirical research (HR ETHICS 2024-27851-49715-3 University of Melbourne) exploring the following research questions:

1. How have equality commissions in Australia used information interventions; and

2. If, and how, they have evaluated information interventions used.

The research consists of a mixed methods qualitative study, generating survey and interview data from each of Australia's Equality Commissions. This novel data about the use of information interventions by Australia's Equality Commissions will be analysed to shed light on how information interventions can be utilised in achieving effective and impactful regulation. Particular focus will be placed on the use of information interventions when limited regulatory strategies are available, or resourcing or other imperatives dictate primary use of cost-effective strategies.

This research examines the emotional exhaustion faced by Brazilian labour inspectors, highlighting their pivotal role as human rights defenders in combating modern slavery. Drawing on my decade of field experience and original research, the study identifies four primary stressors impacting inspectors: field inspections, post-rescue responsibilities, resource deprivation, and relentless on-call demands. Resource deprivation emerged as the most significant source of emotional strain, despite Brazil's international acclaim for its anti-slavery efforts. The findings reveal that while inspectors’ commitment has remained steadfast for nearly thirty years, their work is persistently undermined by political indifference, fluctuating government support, and structural challenges across administrations of varying political ideologies.

A key insight from this study is the emotional toll of the post-rescue phase, during which inspectors often exceed their formal duties to secure victims' well-being. The Labour Inspection Convention (C.81) of the International Labour Organization (ILO) grants them significant autonomy—crucial for addressing labour rights violations and confronting powerful economic interests. This independence fosters a deep alignment with the needs of vulnerable workers rather than their government employer, further cementing their dual identity as public servants and human rights defenders.

The study situates labour inspectors' experiences within Brazil’s thirty-year struggle against modern slavery, initiated with the formation of the Special Mobile Inspection Group (GEFM). Despite global recognition of Brazil’s anti-slavery model, political clashes have persisted, largely due to the economic influence and lobbying power of the industries targeted by inspections. These tensions often translate into direct threats against inspectors or covert political pressure on the Ministry of Labour, undermining enforcement efforts despite ILO protections. The high-stakes nature of inspections, particularly when confronting employers aware of severe penalties such as trade restrictions or blacklisting from public loans, further compounds inspectors’ emotional burden.

This research addresses a critical gap in the literature by exploring the intersection of grassroots activism, human rights advocacy, and emotional exhaustion among anti-slavery practitioners. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the study draws from quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews with experienced labour inspectors to examine the complex interplay of stressors and their cumulative impact. The findings underscore the paradox of Brazil’s anti-slavery efforts: celebrated globally as a best-practice model, yet sustained through the emotional resilience of inspectors operating under chronic resource constraints and political pressures. Ultimately, this study calls for comprehensive support systems and policy reforms to safeguard inspectors' well-being, ensuring the sustainability of Brazil’s globally lauded anti-slavery initiatives.

Drastic reforms have transformed the Greek labor-market since 2010. Along with vast unemployment and erosion of wage bargaining, they arguably have changed the landscape of worker contracts and enlarged the number of flexible workers along with temporary contacts, unpaid and/or non-declared working hours, and dismissals. In this paper, we utilize EU-LFS microdata from 2010 to 2020 to answer the following two questions: has the number of flexible and informal workers really grown through the process of labor-law reforms? And are their working conditions and earnings significantly different? We find that indeed the labor-market reforms have given rise to an increase in flexible and informal work. Then we test whether the two-sector theory is corroborated by the Greek labor-market, or whether it could be better described with the so-called lighthouse effect on minimum wage to earnings of informal workers along with formal workers. We consider informal labor and test it with Difference-in-Difference analysis and Kernel Density approaches to see whether the rise in the minimum wage that happened in 2019 had negative or positive effects on the employment and earnings of the informal workers. The results indicate that the pro-labor movements have indeed given rise to a lighthouse effect.

In 2006, the International Labour Organization promulgated the Maritime Labour Convention, which clarified the rights and obligations of ratifying countries and seafarers. However, there exists a room for institutional arbitrage—if a country's shipowner association signs a collective agreement with the seafarers' union, port state inspections will only examine the compliance of the collective agreement, rather than the individual contracts. The "Chinese Seafarers' Collective Agreement" emerged in this context. This paper aims to examine whether the "Chinese Seafarers' Collective Agreement" of 2022-2023 has improved the working conditions of Chinese seafarers. Using a difference-in-differences approach, the paper analyzes 130394 inspection results from the 2020-2024 "Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control in the Asia-Pacific Region." The empirical results show that the signing of collective agreements significantly reduces the proportion of labor-related deficiencies in port state inspections and lowers the frequency of deficiencies in labor clauses related to shipboard conditions, while having no significant effect on facility-related labor clauses. Mechanism analysis shows that the effect of collective agreements on improving labor conditions diminishes when inspections are conducted in the ports of contracting states. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the signing of collective agreements has a more positive effect on labor conditions for flag-of-convenience ships and privately owned vessels. These results suggest that the enforcement of international conventions is non-compulsory, and in practice, sovereign states tend to implement flexible enforcement, engaging in institutional arbitrage. The protection of international seafarer labor standards and working conditions remains an issue that requires further improvement.