Sectoral trends [in employment, working conditions and workplace relationships]: a survey

The objective of this paper is to provide a preliminary overview of major issues in sectoral and intersectoral trends in employment, working conditions and workplace relationships, as well as basic workers’ rights.

The survey includes three main themes:

• the sectoral distribution of economic activity and how these trends are affecting the organization of work.
• an assessment of the effect these trends have had on the representational strength of workers’ and employers’ organizations and on collective bargaining systems.
• an overview of how these changes are affecting transnational labour relations at the regional and global levels.

It finds that:

• that there has been a phenomenal growth of employment in services, declining employment in manufacturing and substantial employment shift out of agricultural employment in developed countries. Even in developing countries, where agricultural employment continues to be a significant share of economic activity and where manufacturing employment has been growing, the report notes that the growth of employment in services sectors has been very substantial
• the importance of agriculture and rural-based employment in developing countries should be an important calculation in the research, policy and technical advice offered by the ILO's Sectoral Activities Programme. In manufacturing, the global shift to developing countries in some sectors and the general decline in aggregate employment numbers merit continued scrutiny
• the ever-growing gap between high-skilled high paid workers and low-skilled low paid workers is a cause for concern primarily because of the inequities inherent in wide income disparities and because the scope of issues affecting these groups is significantly different