Inequality in Asia and the Pacific

The paper on Inequality in Asia and the Pacific was prepared on the basis of discussions and findings at the ITUC-AP Regional Capacity Building Workshop on Inequality and Sustainable Growth on 10-11 March 2015 in Singapore. It identifies inequality as a threat to sustainable development, political stability, and democracy, and identifies the main features in inequality as identified in the Asia-Pacific Region and globally.

The paper notes that the direction of trade union policy to redress inequality should be raising union density, strengthening bargaining capacity, and unity for institutional reform to promote the shift to income-led growth model (based on high-income and pro-labour distributional policies). It concludes that sustainable economic growth and equitable society are not natural projects of the current economic growth regime driven only by the market, and that a shift to the above income-led growth model is thus necessary.