WAGEINDICATOR

WISUTIL conference, Vienna, Austria

26-27 September2011

Paulien Osse director Wage Indicator Foundation

• How it started: How it started: What is my wage? – Good question, nobody knows! Let's find out for myself, my cleaning lady, the nanny. Let's find out for everybody on the labor market. Not only the white male top end.

• 10 years ago: Dutch initiative - Non Profit – Board: University of Amsterdam + Dutch Confederation of Trade Unions + Monster.com

• Today: Worldwide platform covering 60 countries. Formal and informal economies, small and large.

• Now websites with Wages and Benefits by Occupation – International Comparison – Minimum Wages – VIP Wages - Labor Law – Special attention for Women, Youth, Elderly on the Labor market – Career Advice

• Contribution to: Awareness Compliance Social Peace

What is WageIndicator

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– 2001 Netherlands– 2004 7 EU-countries– 2005 Brasil, South-

Africa, India– 2006 USA, Mexico,

Argentina– 2007 Russia, post-

soviet countries– 2008 more EU,

Colombia, Guatemala, Paraguay

– 2009 Indonesia, Southern Africa

– 2010 China, Pakistan

– 2011 Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Australia

– 2011 – Q 4 - Egypt, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana

Websites in 60 countries

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• 3-4 clicks1) Choose an occupation: choice of many occupations2) Tick personal characteristics: age, gender, education,

region, etc3) Output screen: average monthly/weekly wage in an

occupation, taken into account the characteristicsExtra info:– Output screen: other characteristics of the occupation

• A Salary Check – is free of charge– attracts huge numbers of visitors– is based on data collected in a web-survey

What is a Salary Check?

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• Organisation: NL team for overall management, web-management, hosting & technical supportweb-marketing, data- and survey management

• Organisation: Regional Offices for international and sub regional and national web and research activities: Buenos Aires, Cape Town/Maputo, Minsk, Ahmedabad

• Funding: projects from EU, development aid, ministries• Funding: licenses, advertisements, sales of data and survey

questions (omnibus survey)

WageIndicator organisation

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• Trade unions– National confederations – all countries apart from China– International confederations: ITUC, UNI

• Online newspapers, radio– Sueddeutsche (DE)– La Nacion (AR ); KP.Ru (RU)

• Portals– UOL (BR), MSN (NL, UK),

• Career sites– Career site Monster (BE, KR, NL, SE)

WageIndicator Partners

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• Worldwide > 16 million web-visitors per year– worldwide, the public shows a great desire for

information about wages, minimum wages, labour law, VIP wages

• Web-marketing efforts– web-marketing and search engine optimization– cooperation with major Internet players:

MSN, portals, trade unions, newspapers, career sites

– example: in Brazil with UOL, in China with largest jobsite

• EFFECT on Web-survey– all websites invite visitors to complete a web-

survey on work and wages (continuous survey in national language)

– -> generates a large database with wage information

Web traffic and web survey

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• On wages and working hours– wages of nurses in three countries (Finnish & English)– wages of engineers, bookkeepers, shop assistants, etc in

Germany (German)– effects of MNE’s on wages in 7 EU countries (English)

• On workplace relations– attitudes towards collective bargaining coverage (Eng.)– effect of dismissals on self-perceived job insecurity (Eng.)

• On labor markets– working conditions in 7 EU countries (English, German,

Hungarian, Spanish)

Research publications

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• Yes: 1. The combination between wages and occupations2. Insight throughout the whole labour market3. International comparable4. To use online and offline (survey, minimum wage

info, labour law info)5. Lighthouse in countries where Trade Union is weak6. Lighthouse in countries with no insight at all in what

happens in the labour market (Egypt, Zambia, Pakistan, f.e.)

Is this new?

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Want to Join?

The end

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