At the OECD’s ‘Simplifying for Success’ Symposium on 18 November, trade unions raised deep concerns about exclusionary regulatory practices, arguing that measurement frameworks depend almost entirely on business surveys and cost models whilst marginalising the benefits of regulation.
This exclusion produces real policy problems. OECD survey data exposes sharp divergences between business and government priorities: 55% of businesses identify labour regulations as requiring “simplification”, compared with only 25% of governments. Environmental regulations follow similar patterns, prioritised by 50% of businesses but just 14% of governments.
Regulation is about politics, which is why regulatory impact assessment should be inclusive and transparent. Businesses are sensitive to costs, whilst trade unions are more sensitive to benefits. Regulatory impact assessment is not a neutral exercise to decide if a cost is excessive or not.
Trade unions emphasise that workers possess unique insights into regulatory effectiveness. Workers implement regulations directly, including civil servants throughout public sector operations. They experience the compliance costs and protective benefits firsthand, making their assessment invaluable.
Worker involvement in regulatory decisions is especially critical given recent dismantling of fundamental workplace protections. US authorities removed requirements for seat belts in agricultural vehicles, adequate construction site lighting, and ventilation in mines.
TUAC points to these examples in response to regulation being framed as “burdensome”, alongside the EU’s 2006 elimination of mandatory safety checks on high-risk machinery, which triggered increased worker injuries until authorities reinstated protections through the 2022 Machinery Directive.
Beyond challenging regulatory framing, trade unions dispute current methodologies for measuring impacts. Methodologies meticulously quantify business compliance costs, but struggle to measure protective benefits. Business respondents to OECD surveys identify reporting as the most burdensome obligation, yet assessments overlook how disclosure prevents larger risks and improves internal management. More fundamentally, assessment frameworks prioritise narrow economic metrics while ignoring factors crucial to regulatory effectiveness.
The care sector reveals how the biases play out in practice. At the event’s session on simplification in the sector, TUAC emphasised that the ultimate public policy objectives should be universal access to quality care, and that the competitiveness of health services should not be an end it itself. To improve the effectiveness of care services, it is indispensable to improve working conditions for health and care workers, whom to date, as OECD data shows, remain understaffed and undervalued in most OECD countries.
TUAC insists that impact assessments must examine how regulatory outcomes distribute across stakeholders, particularly vulnerable workers including women, migrants and young people. Trade unions argue that difficulties in assigning precise monetary values to preventing discrimination or protecting fundamental rights cannot justify claiming they are valueless.
Despite these measurement challenges, the 2025 OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook shows that although 82% of OECD countries require systematic stakeholder engagement, authorities consult most stakeholders only occasionally rather than systematically. TUAC demands that regulatory frameworks explicitly reference trade unions, governments establish tripartite platforms, and authorities resource disadvantaged groups’ participation.
Photo credit: Marcel Crozet / ILO
