While Asian economies boomed before the global recession in 2008, the fruits of that progress did not translate into better wages or secure employment conditions for workers in the region. The International Labour Organisation (ILO)'s Asian Decent Work Decade launched in 2006 was aimed at five priority areas of competitiveness, productivity and jobs; Labour Market governance; youth employment, managing labour migration and local development for poverty reduction. Today workers' unions are...

Mismatch between potential and experience confounds many a job-seeker, say managers   Mun Ching Yap had gone as a journalist to an airline company to interview its executive official, but her excitement, passion and ability to learn earned her a job as the head of the company's strategic planning department. Ms. Mun, now a columnist and entrepreneur from Malaysia, was 28 years old then. “In Malaysia, the median age of the population is 27,...

JANGU, 40, a Dalit labourer in Paraspur village in Gonda district, 120 km northeast of Lucknow, displays his job card in complete disbelief. “My job card was made three years ago and shows three payments. But I was never given any work, so how was the payment made?” he asks, puzzled. The first entry shows a payment of Rs 1,400 but he received a paltry Rs 100. He never went...

Foreign retailers may have to reserve at least half of their jobs in superstores for rural youth and source more than the mandated 30% from micro and small industries as the government tries to salvage the big ticket but controversial economic reform.  An official said the government is likely to have a relook at a proposal that seeks to reserve at least 50% of jobs in foreign-owned superstores for those who...

The 11th five-year plan promised the nation “inclusive growth”. It marked a departure from the earlier official position that the “benefits of growth” would automatically “trickle down” to the poor, and that if growth was not actually benefiting the poor, then the reason lay in its not being high enough. The 11th plan, by contrast, conceded that the “benefits of growth” did not automatically “trickle down”, but argued that growth...