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"Key findings
For workers, employer retaliation represents a major threat in
response to their participation in a strike. While dismissal is the
most visible form of such retaliation, it can also take more ‘hidden'
forms, such as demotion, disciplinary sanctions or withdrawal of
voluntary overtime. Addressing a notable gap, protections from
detriments short of dismissal are expected to be introduced into
UK law by the soon to be enacted Employment Rights Act. The
purpose of this brief is to situate the United Kingdom (UK) within
a broader set of comparative examples of how the law protects
workers from detriments short of dismissal for participation in a
lawful strike in eight other European countries (Belgium, Croatia,
France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden).
The analysis produces several key findings of relevance to
policymakers:
• The legal framework should make sure that it considers all the
different dimensions of protection to ensure solid and broad
legal protection as gaps in one area can undermine the entire
system.
• Countries with broad protection typically rely on openended legal norms, such as prohibiting all acts ‘harming' or
‘discriminating' against workers or barring any ‘other prejudicial
treatment', rather than a closed list enumerating all prohibited
detriments.
• Proving the link between a detriment and strike participation can
be difficult for a worker, especially if the test is highly restrictive.
To address this, many countries provide for a reversal of the
burden of proof and legal presumptions favouring workers.
• Most countries offer a broad range of remedies, combining nonmonetary and monetary remedies.
• The law in most countries makes it possible for trade unions to
bring claims for detriment short of dismissal, in addition and/or
behalf of affected workers, acknowledging the collective harms
of such detriments and the risk of individual workers' reluctance
to take legal action due to fear of job loss."

"What are the job multipliers of the green industrialization? We tackle this question within EU regions over the period 2003-2017, building a novel measure of green manufacturing penetration that combines green production and regional employment data. We estimate local job multipliers of green penetration in a long-difference model, using a shift-share instrument that exploits plausibly exogenous changes in non-EU green innovation. We find that a 3-years change in green penetration per worker increases the employment-to-active population ratio by 0.11 pp. The effect is: persistent both in manufacturing and outside manufacturing; halved by agglomeration effects that increase the labour market tightness; stronger for workers with high and low-education; and present also in regions specialized in polluting industries. When focusing on large shocks in a staggered DiD design, we find ten times larger effects, particularly in earlier periods."

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"AI can be used to improve access to social security benefits and ensure the right benefits get to the right people at the right time. To explore how AI can be used to this end, this report documents concrete policy levers, tools, implementation strategies, and capacity-building efforts in national public services, with particular attention to issues of data quality, governance, and workforce readiness. It provides guidance on how the social security sector can benefit from and align with national efforts for more cohesive, impactful and trustworthy uses of AI. Further efforts will be needed to explore the effective use of AI in the social security sector, particularly in adapting these practices to the specific operational, legal, and ethical contexts of social protection systems. Continued experimentation, evaluation, and cross-sector collaboration will be essential to ensure that AI adoption delivers tangible benefits while safeguarding equity, transparency, and public trust.

The report underscores a critical opportunity to harness AI as a strategic enabler of more inclusive, effective, and transparent social security systems. Realising this potential will depend on embedding robust governance frameworks, investing in data and infrastructure, and building the institutional and human capabilities necessary for trustworthy AI in the public sector."

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"Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to be an important driver of productivity growth over the next decade, even if with significant cross-country heterogeneity. This paper examines the potential of AI to foster productivity growth in Low-Income Countries (LICs) and Lower-Middle-Income Countries (LMICs).

LICs and LMICs risk benefiting less from AI due to low incidence of knowledge-intensive services, where gains from AI mostly occur. Additionally, barriers to AI adoption include inadequate digital infrastructure, low levels of education and skills in the workforce, limited access to financing for high AI adoption costs, and underdeveloped regulatory frameworks. At the same time, LICs and LMICs may benefit from factors such as a young workforce and international spillovers through knowledge transfers. Overall, structural weaknesses in LICs and LMICs risk outweighing these potential advantages. This underscores the need for policies that enhance capabilities for AI adoption in LICs and LMICs and help seizing long-run opportunities from the global AI economy.

In the same series"

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"Population ageing is transforming economies and societies across many OECD countries, including those in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe. At the same time, persistent inequalities in paid and unpaid work continue to limit women's full participation in the labour market, undermining growth, productivity, and countries' capacity to respond to demographic change. This policy paper examines how low fertility, longer life expectancy, and rising care needs intersect with gaps in employment, earnings, and caregiving. Drawing on international evidence and country experiences, the paper highlights how gender-blind demographic strategies can inadvertently reinforce inequalities, reduce policy effectiveness, and miss opportunities to strengthen care systems, labour supply, and healthy ageing. It identifies how governments can design more effective demographic responses by integrating equality considerations into labour market, care, health, and social protection reforms. It also outlines the institutional capacities needed to support whole-of-government action, from budgeting to data systems and impact assessments."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"As digital technologies become central to everyday life, screen time is increasingly shaping how people experience well-being. This brief explores these dynamics using recent cross-country poll data for 14 countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States), collected in early 2025 in collaboration with Cisco as part of the OECD Digital Well-being Hub. Using binary logistic regression models, it finds that individuals spending more than two hours daily on screens for personal use are more likely to report poorer subjective well-being . Yet, screen time alone does not tell the whole story. Lifestyle conditions like sleep deprivation, low physical activity and financial hardship prove to be even stronger predictors of low subjective well-being. Vulnerabilities deepen when prolonged screen use is coupled with factors like loneliness or unemployment. These findings underscore the importance of a balanced use of digital technologies for healthier lives."

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"This policy brief provides new insights into how people experience the role of digital technologies in their lives, based on original cross-country data from the poll in the OECD Digital Well-being Hub, developed in collaboration with Cisco. The findings reveal wide variations in digital engagement and well-being outcomes across different groups of society. Younger adults report the highest engagement with generative AI, remote work, and recreational screen time. Women are relatively more engaged in social networking than men; and while most overall perceive digital tools as strengthening their relationships, this view is more common among youth and women. High screen time remains a concern, with 38% of users, especially young adults, exceeding five hours daily. AI-related training is primarily taken up by younger, highly educated individuals, reflecting increasing awareness of AI's impact on career prospects. Within the OECD Well-being Framework, these findings offer a timely lens on the complex interplay between digitalisation, demographic patterns, and people's well-being."

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"This paper updates previous OECD work on the strictness of activation requirements for benefit recipients, a topic central to the mutual obligations framework that underpins modern social safety nets. It covers multiple tiers of income support for jobseekers, including unemployment insurance, unemployment assistance, and minimum income benefits where relevant. By incorporating new data for 2024, it presents detailed information on job-search reporting procedures, monitoring mechanisms, definitions of suitable work, and sanction rules across OECD and EU countries. The paper also updates the OECD indicator of strictness of activation requirements. This composite indicator summarises complex national rules into a single, standardised measure that enables consistent monitoring and benchmarking across countries. Together with related OECD databases on benefit levels, work incentives for benefit recipients, and spending on active labour market policies, the updated database and strictness indicator support in-depth, evidence-based assessments of recent changes in income support and activation policies."

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"The global economy has proved more resilient than expected this year, supported by improved financial conditions, rising AI-related investment and trade, and macroeconomic policies. However, underlying fragilities are increasing. Labour markets are showing first signs of weakening despite the OECD unemployment rate steady at 4.9%, with job vacancies falling below their 2019 average in many countries and confidence softening. Risks around the outlook remain significant, including the prospect of further trade barriers, a potential sharp repricing of risk in financial markets, potentially amplified by stresses in leveraged non-bank financial institutions and volatile crypto-asset markets. Lingering fiscal concerns could lead to further increases in long-term bond yields, which may tighten financial conditions and elevate debt-service burdens, potentially weighing on economic growth."

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