Scaling Up Information to Expedite Conciliation

This project aims to scale a statistical calculator designed to support workers and firms engaged in firing disputes by facilitating informed conciliation and reducing labor lawsuits. The calculator provides data-driven estimates of typical settlement ranges based on historical case outcomes, helping parties negotiate fair settlements during a conciliation meeting with a public labor conciliator. The intervention was rigorously tested in three randomized controlled trials (RCTs) at the Mexico City Labor Court, demonstrating its effectiveness both for disputes already in litigation and in pre-lawsuit stages. Results from these RCTs, detailed in Sadka, Seira, and Woodruff (2024), influenced the 2018–2019 reforms to Mexico’s Federal Labor Law, establishing a mandatory conciliation stage with provisions for using such tools. To operationalize this reform, the project supports the Federal Secretariat of Labor and partners in enhancing the Sistema Nacional de Conciliación Laboral (SINACOL), which has processed nearly 2 million conciliation requests since November 2020. SINACOL collects detailed settlement data that enables ongoing calibration of the calculator, factoring in worker, job, and regional characteristics. This initiative will provide technical assistance to automate data collection, calculator calibration, and integration into conciliation hearings, delivering real-time settlement information to workers, firms, and conciliators. The goal is to improve dispute resolution efficiency and outcomes nationwide by empowering parties with transparent, evidence-based settlement expectations. This project includes an experimental rollout stage that would be administered through the same platform that manages the new compulsory labor conciliation procedure. This will take up a small proportion of the costs but will provide rigorous evidence to confirm to the labor authorities the benefits of full scale national adoption.