Beginning on April 1st, 2012 Thailand's government honoured one of the promises it made during elections and raised minimum wages across the country. This is only the beginning for new politics sweeping countries across Asia and it is a mirror of the same direction being taken in Latin America.

The Malaysian government, for example, will soon institute the first ever minimum wage in the history of the country and this is the direction that countries across Asia are heading in. Asian countries have decided that the way to combat a widening global inequity gap is by strengthening domestic social security nets -- the most basic of which is the minimum wage.

The meeting of G20 Labour Ministers in Paris on September 26-27, held in advance of the November G20 summit in Cannes, reached some conclusions which go some (extremely modest) way toward living up to prior G20 commitments in London and Pittsburgh to promote quality jobs and a more progressive labour market model as part of a long-term solution to the global economic crisis.

Ministers met with trade union and employer representatives, including myself, in a half-day session on their first day of meetings, and the ILO, with the OECD, was also invited to participate. There was one labour representative per country at the meeting with Ministers (and more from France.)