The President of the International Organization of Employer (IOE), Daniel Funes de Rioja, was a keynote speaker at the B20 China Second Joint Task Force meeting. It was developed within the context of the OECD Forum 2016, which brought together the B20 Task Forces to discuss, improve and consolidate the related policy recommendations, and to finalise the draft B20 Policy Paper. In addition, the gathering aimed to improve interaction between the B20 and relevant international organisations.

Funes de Rioja addressed the Employment Task Force and celebrated the “huge progress” made in finalising the recommendations to be submitted to the G20 leaders.

He also reported that the G20 countries had submitted their evaluations of their implementation of G20 commitments, as well as updates of national employment plans. IOE’s president welcomed this development as a key step in bringing much needed transparency and accountability to the G20 process.

He announced the launch of a new G20 apprenticeships initiative and called on the members of the Employment Task Force to provide their perspectives on this as both the B20 and L20 were called upon by the G20 to participate.

Funes de Rioja identified four key areas of work for G20 governments.

• Implement programs and reforms to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation;
• Remove structural barriers and enact support mechanisms to increase youth employment participation;
• Implement and encourage initiatives to increase female labour force participation rates,
• Enact policies to assess and reduce the skills mismatch and workforce capability gap.

Finally, he extended an invitation to the Employment Task Force to attend the 11^th July event in Beijing with G20 labour ministers, which shall provide a good occasion to discuss employment recommendations in an informal setting in advance of the G20 labour ministerial.

Source: IOE