Page 436 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS320 Michael Frosch
following main topics (2) ICSE-18, (3) Measurement of ICSE-18, (4)
Conclusions.

2. International Classification of Status in Employment (ICSE-18)
ICSE-18 is at the core of the 20 ICLS resolution I. It comprises ten mutually
th
exclusively statuses that refer to work relationships within employment. The
classification uses two different aspects of the work relationship as criteria to
differentiate categories of jobs according to their status: the type of authority
that the worker is able to exercise in relation to the work performed and the
type of economic risk to which the worker is exposed. The ten categories
include four sub-categories of employees which allow identification of those
with non-standard employment arrangements, four separate categories of
independent workers and a separate category for respectively dependent
contractors and contributing family workers. The category “workers in
producers’ cooperatives” previously included in ICSE-93 has not been retained
in ICSE-18.
Dependent contractors is a new category in ICSE-18 and it addresses the
challenge many statistical agencies have of how to define workers that are on
the boundary between being employees and self-employed. The 20th ICLS
resolution I defines dependent contractors as workers that have a commercial
agreement to provide services or goods for or on behalf of another economic
entity but at the same time are dependent (operationally or economically) on
that entity for the organization and execution of the work or for access to the
market.
One of the weakness with ICSE-93 was the blurry boundary between paid
employment jobs and self-employment. Owner-mangers of incorporated
enterprises and contractors were two categories of worker identified as
“particular groups” in ICSE-93, these workers cut across two or more of the
substantive groups and countries have to choose where to place them. This is
addressed in ICSE-18 by the new structure of ten detailed mutually exclusive
categories that can be organised not only according to type of authority but
also according to type of economic risk. This creates two different hierarchies:
the International Classification of Status in Employment according to type of
authority (ICSE-18-A) and the Classification of Status in Employment according
to type of Economic risk (ICSE-18-R).
ICSE-18-A reflects the degree of authority that the worker is able to
exercise in the job. This creates a dichotomy between independent workers
and dependent workers. Independent workers have control over how the work
should be organised, can make the most important decisions about the
activities of the business and are not economically dependent i.e. they do
control access to the market, raw material and capital items. Conversely,
dependent workers do not have complete authority or control over the

423 | I S I W S C 2 0 1 9