Labour market policy
Ensuring employment opportunities for all with fair wages and decent working conditions are key trade union principles. The OECD makes policy recommendations and publishes studies that influence labour market policies including working conditions and wages, the retirement age, and workers’ rights.
Through our engagement with the OECD’s Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Committee and its working parties, as well as the OECD’s Action Programme for Local Employment and Economic Development, TUAC is working to ensure that these recommendations and studies support and promote job quality, fair wages and strong labour market institutions and social dialogue, including collective bargaining and trade union representation.
TUAC’s work in this area is led by Filip Stefanovic and Adnan Habibija. For more information, please contact stefanovic@tuac.org and habibija@tuac.org.
Trade unions challenge glacial pace of gender pay gap progress
The OECD’s latest report on gender equality reveals that significant workplace inequalities endure across OECD and EU countries, with TUAC highlighting critical policy gaps in addressing systemic wage disparities affecting women workers. In 2023, the median full-time working woman earned 11% ...
TUAC: Improving Job Quality Key to Retaining Older Workers in the Labour Market
TUAC welcomes today’s OECD Employment Outlook and its recognition that job quality is essential for retaining older workers in the labour market. TUAC’s response notes the report’s findings of strong labour markets with record high employment levels and low unemployment across ...
TUAC Co-Hosts AI Roundtable at MCM, Demands Worker Voice in Technology Governance
In the margins of the 2025 OECD Ministerial Council Meeting, TUAC co-hosted the roundtable “AI at Work: Impacts for Productivity and Job Quality” following its 156th Plenary this week. The event, jointly organised with Business at OECD (BIAC), brought together trade union ...
TUAC webinar: Trade unions warn of worsening career prospects for younger workers amid stalling gender pay progress
The Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) today hosted the second webinar of its 2025 series, bringing together trade union representatives, researchers, and OECD officials to examine connections between narrowing gender pay gaps and declining opportunities for younger workers. The ...
Persistent Inequality Undermining Economic Growth, New TUAC Paper Warns
TUAC has today published a new paper warning that growing inequality is actively undermining economic growth across OECD countries, while proposing stronger collective bargaining as a crucial tool for closing the productivity-wage gap and building more sustainable economies. The paper, ...
No signs of a wage-price spiral, OECD report confirms
The latest OECD Wage Bulletin, published on 13 March, shows that real wages have finally started to grow on a yearly basis in a majority of OECD countries, after the sharp decline caused by the 2021-2022 inflation surge. In Q3 2023, real wage growth was positive in 25 of the 35 countries with ...
TUAC calls for urgent action on rising inequality and workers’ rights
TUAC General Secretary Veronica Nilsson warned of growing inequality and workers’ rights challenges during the World Economic Forum’s “Closing the Jobs Gap” panel today. Speaking alongside the ILO Director-General and business leaders, Nilsson highlighted growing ...
TUAC puts collective bargaining at heart of OECD inequality debate
Trade unions are calling on the OECD to address record levels of inequality, highlighting the critical role of collective bargaining and worker representation in driving sustainable economic growth. The case for change was presented at the TUAC-OECD liaison committee meeting on 9th January, where ...
Trade unions call for public investment and fiscal policies to support steel sector recovery
TUAC, IndustriALL Global Union and industriAll Europe expressed their profound concern about the cumulative loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the steel sector and related industries, globally, and many more currently on the line. The trade union representatives attending the OECD Steel Committee ...
Job retention: social dialogue and reformed short-time work helped Spain weather COVID
A new publication from the OECD highlights that the labour market in Spain showed substantially more resilience during the COVID-19 crisis compared to the global financial crisis. Whereas unemployment in the earlier crisis skyrocketed by 18 percentage points, it only increased modestly by 3 ...
