TUAC Webinar: What kind of Sustainable Economic Model post COVID-19?

Wednesday 7 October 2020, 13:00 – 14:30 (CEST)

To participate please complete the Zoom registration form by 6 October 2020.

SPEAKERS

• William HYNES, Head of the New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC) Initiative, OECD
•  Geoff TILY, Senior Economist, Trades Union Congress, UK

Moderated by Pierre HABBARD, General Secretary, TUAC

Followed by Q&A.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered the second systemic global crisis in just over a decade.

As countries cope with its consequences, the global economy clearly needs more than a simple “recovery” to the previous state of affairs: stagnant productivity, compressed wages, declining job quality, rising inequality and environmental challenges require a paradigm shift in order to be addressed effectively.

Following the 2008 global financial crisis, the OECD launched a much welcome initiative for New Approaches to Economic Challenges. In its most recent publication, the NAEC calls to move Beyond Growth, as “many of the policies implemented over the last forty years or so are no longer able to improve economic and social outcomes in the ways they once promised”.

Outside the OECD, within the labour movement, traditional economic policy recommendations were being questioned well before COVID-19 and even more so afterwards. British TUC’s senior economist Geoff Tily calls for a renewed “internationalism of labour”, in opposition to capital globalisation, one that reverses the shift from capital liberalisation to strengthening labour and the wage share.

The TUAC webinar is an opportunity to take stock and re-think mainstream approaches to policy-making, looking at “what went wrong” in order to understand what needs to be done.