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Discussion on New Economic Paradigm Marks TUAC 60th Anniversary

19/12/2008

Created in 1948 at the launch of the Marshall Plan, TUAC celebrated its 60th anniversary on 12 December 2008 with a special seminar at the OECD gathering TUAC’s affiliates, representatives of Global Union Federations (PSI, IMF, EI, ICEM), the ITUC, the ETUC, OECD Secretariat staff and Ambassadors.

Angel Gurria, General Secretary of the OECD, acknowledged the contribution of the TUAC to the work of the OECD, citing the recent OECD report “Growing Unequal”, which had been “inspired by TUAC’s concerns”. Speaking for the ILO, Kari Tapiola, ILO Executive Director, called for “closer cooperation between the ILO and the OECD”.

The discussions of the seminar and the preceding TUAC plenary meeting were dominated by the global financial crisis, the need to protect the real economy and what governments should do. For TUAC delegates, the depth and magnitude of the crisis require a new economic paradigm.

John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO and the TUAC, said that TUAC policy analysis over the past years “got it right” in anticipating the unfolding and deepening of the crisis, and “the perils of de-regulation”. Guy Ryder and John Monks, General Secretaries respectively of the ITUC and ETUC, both reflected on the labour movement’s response to the crisis. The meeting gave an opportunity to consider the follow-up to the Global Unions Washington Declaration submitted to the G20 crisis summit on 15 November, as well as a TUAC position paper on financial “Re-regulation in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis”.

Passing on some advice, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, MEP and former PM of Denmark, called on the OECD to put “the real economy before the needs of the financial markets” and to look at the demand-side of the path to economic growth.  “Too much supply-side economics” have dominated the OECD, he concluded.

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