Mejia, Kiana A.

Naria, Mary Joyce D.

 Labor freedom is the idea that both the
employee and employer should be able to
negotiate terms of work without being
subjected to government regulations.
 Ability to hire and fire employees and
determine work hours and work
conditions (“labor freedom”). Here
impediments include rules governing
hiring and work hours and restrictions
on firing and working conditions. These
restrictions may come from government
or from collective bargaining with
unions.

https://lanekenworthy.net/economic-freedom/
 Labor market flexibility is a firm's ability to make
changes to their workforce in terms of the number of
employees they hire and the number of hours worked
by the employees. Labor market flexibility also
includes areas such as wages and unions. A flexible
labor market is one where firms are under fewer
regulations regarding the labor force and can
therefore set wages (i.e. no minimum wage), fire
employees at will and change their work hours.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/labor-market-
flexibility.asp
 Measuring the extent of labor freedom can be
difficult, but the Heritage Foundation put
together a list of six factors to do so, in their
annual Index of Economic Freedom for 2014.

http://www.appstate.edu/~ehrhardtgc/Economic_freedo
m_codebook.pdf
 The minimum wage component is basically a
single quantitative measure: each country’s
mandatory minimum wage as a percentage of
the average value added per worker. A higher
minimum wage makes hiring unskilled workers
more difficult
 Hiring tends to cost more. This is because
you are having to pay for employee benefits,
for their social security taxes, etc.
 Hiring tends to make it harder to be
flexible. If you don't have enough work for
your employees, you have to fire them. If
you just have free lancers, you just don't hire
them again after a specific task is done.
 Rigidity of hours is an index measure,
calculated by Doing Business, that includes
five components:
(i) whether night work is unrestricted; (ii) whether
weekend work is unrestricted; (iii) whether the
workweek can consist of 5.5 days; (iv) whether the
workweek can extend to 50 hours or more
(including overtime) for 2 months a year; and (v)
whether paid annual vacation is 21 working days or
fewer. 8
 Difficulty of firing is also an index measure
calculated by Doing Business. It represents a
simple issue: whether employers have the
legal authority to lay off workers efficiently,
or whether that act has to be justified to the
government or third parties. It has eight
components:
 (i) whether redundancy is disallowed as a basis for
terminating workers; (ii) whether the employer needs to
notify a third party (such as a government agency) to
terminate 1 redundant worker; (iii) whether the
employer needs to notify a third party to terminate a
group of more than 20 redundant workers; (iv) whether
the employer needs approval from a third party to
terminate 1 redundant worker; (v) whether the
employer needs approval from a third party to terminate
a group of more than 20 redundant workers; (vi) whether
the law requires the employer to consider reassignment
or retraining options before redundancy termination;
(vii) whether priority rules apply for redundancies; and
(viii) whether priority rules apply for reemployment. 9
 You usually send a legal notice within 3 to 6
months of an offence occurring. Nonetheless
notice period issues are subjective and
entirely dependent upon the employment
agreement that one has signed with his/her
employer, unless one is a workman and not
employee. One would need to study exactly
what the employment agreement says with
respect to notice period and then take a call.
There are two types of notice period: statutory and
contractual. Statutory notice is the minimum legal
notice that can be given. Employers should give the
employee:
 one week's notice if the employee has been employed
by the employer continuously for one month or more,
but for less than two years
 two weeks' notice if the employee has been employed
by the employer continuously for two years, and one
additional week's notice for each further complete year
of continuous employment, up to a maximum of 12
weeks. For example if an employee has worked for 5
years then they are entitled to 5 weeks' notice.
 contractual notice is the amount of notice that the
employer can set out in the terms and conditions of
employment which can be longer than the statutory
notice. For example the statutory notice an
employee must give to an employer is one week,
however, an employer can state within the terms of
employment that an employee must give one month's
notice.
 There is no law which states that employers must
provide severance pay to employees who are being
laid off. Instead, severance is voluntary on the part
of the employer. The employer can offer to pay
severance or it can refuse to pay severance. In
general, it is entirely up to the employer.
 Nevertheless, although that is the general rule, many
employers have indeed made commitments to pay
severance and those commitments often are
enforceable in a court of law.
1. USA 91.4
2. Singapore 90.7
3. Brunei 90.2
4. Hong Kong 89
5. New Zealand 85.9
 The Right to Work principle--the guiding concept of the National
Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation--affirms the right of
every American to work for a living without being compelled to
belong to a union.
 A Right to Work law guarantees that no person can be
compelled, as a condition of employment, to join or not to join,
nor to pay dues to a labor union.
178. Venezuela 29.5
179. Zimbabwe 30
180. Cuba 20
181. Turkmenistan 20
182. North Korea 5
 The North Korean government imposes onerous and abusive
forced labor upon much of its entire population, so a significant
majority of North Koreans must perform forced labor at some
point during their lives.
 North Korean students at some point their schools forced them
to work for free on farms twice a year, for one month at a time.
 Prisoners in North Korea’s political prisons, “reform through
labor” camps, and short-term detention facilities face back-
breaking forced labor in difficult and dangerous conditions.
 Ordinary North Korean workers also do not have the freedom to
choose their job.
LABOR FREEDOM : 57.1
RANK: 108
 Baldoz cited the numerous initiatives of the Philippines,
through the DOLE, in its effort to strengthen its 'labor
freedom', including the adoption of tripartite-endorsed
reforms, such as the two-tier wage system, productivity
incentives, promoting legitimate, responsible, and ethical
sub-contracting (D.O. 18-A), regulatory impact assessment on
the apprenticeship and PESO legislative proposals, the
institutionalization of the new Labor Laws Compliance
System, active employment facilitation programs, the
enactment of the tripartite-supported law on the lifting of the
prohibition of nightwork for women, and Labor Code reforms.
"All these initiatives contribute to our efforts that have
brought significant improvements in the labor market and
which are now being recognized," Baldoz explained.

http://www.dole.gov.ph/news/view/2762
 https://lanekenworthy.net/economic-freedom/

 http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/labor-market-flexibility.asp

 http://www.appstate.edu/~ehrhardtgc/Economic_freedom_codebook.pdf

 http://www.dole.gov.ph/news/view/2762

 https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-notice-period-for-legal-notice

 https://www.quora.com/Is-serving-notice-period-mandatory#

 http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4096

 http://www.gss-law.com/Articles/Is-There-a-Right-to-Severance-Pay.shtml

 http://www.theglobaleconomy.com/USA/herit_labor_freedom/