Driving down from cottage country on a recent weekend, an older sedan full of kids blew by us older, slower and more experienced drivers. Within a half-hour, I could see cars stopped by the side of the road and a car — the sedan that had flown by — overturned in the ditch.

People were rushing to help. Bodies were strewn everywhere, some already covered in blood-stained blankets.

In an instant, I was emotional ketchup.

The tragic stupidity. The loss to families. The willingness of people to help after the fact. The desire to have screamed beforehand to smarten up.

Oddly enough, I felt a similar helplessness and frustration on Thursday and Friday June 15-16, when the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the OECD) released its new employment report entitled “Boosting Jobs and Incomes” at a major international policy conference in Toronto, attended by all the labour ministers from North America, Western Europe and Japan, as well as by trade union representatives, right-wing economists and a few academic critics.

The meeting and report received absolutely no coverage in the Toronto media. But when all the men, ministers (some 30 by my count) and deputy ministers in suits show up, and when draconian policy recommendations such as work-for-welfare, two-tier minimum wages, ending mandatory retirement, further restricting “wage setting institutions” (i.e. unions and collective bargaining), cutting public pensions, are put forward as “common sense” and “reasonable,” people should pay attention.

Such conferences are where global policies are decided, and where new international “standards” of what countries will adhere to, and what domestic policies countries will look to promote over the next ten years, are carefully laid out.

Such conferences also provide the language and reasoning necessary for governments to introduce regressive policies through the media spin of “modernizing” government and helping people.

For example, only three days after the conference, the Stephen Harper government has already leaked a policy recommending the cut back of employer and worker contributions to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) this fall, under the rubric of “putting more money in people’s pockets.” This proposal’s spin is taken almost word for word from the OECD report.

The report’s other recommendations are far more worrying. Couched in high-sounding policy-speak, and backed by an impressive amount of research, the report’s main claim is that “unfriendly” labour market institutions and policies are to blame for the economic woes of the industrialized West.

Unemployment is due to “protective” labour market institutions, the most harmful of which are unemployment benefits. Slow job growth is caused by too “extensive” employment protection laws on hiring and firing, and (though they claim the evidence is still inconclusive) trade unions.

Such institutions and policies, they state, create “rigidities” that inhibit “natural” wage and employment adjustments, and create “barriers” to workers in finding employment, and “obstacles” for employers to hire new people.

The standard neo-liberal policy package of tax cuts, two-tier minimum wages, ending mandatory retirement, kinder versions of work-for-welfare (that in fine Orwellian spin, they call “mutual obligations”), slashing social assistance, and more free trade and investment, they recommend is the best mix of labour, social and economic polices to improve advanced countries job growth and economic performance.

The only new policy twist the OECD adds is a recognition that there may be more than one road to employment “success” (and the Machiavelli in me thinks it may be because of this very limited acknowledgement that the OECD decided not to embarrass its host country and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty by mentioning anything about the conference or alternative models to local Canadian media).

On the one hand, there are the “market reliant countries” (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States), which restrict unions, spend little on public services or training, and have the most draconian eligibility requirements for unemployment and social assistance.

These countries, they show, have produced lots of new jobs over the past ten years, as employers have very happily hired more women, immigrants and young workers to work at low wages at bad jobs, and unsurprisingly have seen soaring rates of inequality, as the rich have got richer, and the poor, poorer.

On the other hand, there are those countries that have adopted the “Scandinavian approach” (the social democratic countries of Austria, Denmark, Norway and Sweden). In these countries, the workforces are largely unionized, governments spend on public services, and there are good child-care and training programs.

However, if there are in fact different options for labour and social policy reform, one wonders why anyone would choose the poorer of the two.

The OECD opaquely suggests that “policy packages must suit national preferences.” But it is not clear who, in say the United States or Canada, would prefer to be among the working poor, who are now estimated to make up about 24-25 per cent of full-time workers in North America.

It is also not apparent why women in any of the market-reliant countries of the U.S., the UK, Canada and Australia would “prefer” not to have national child-care programs that would allow them to work in better jobs, and more adequately balance their family and work lives.

The only saving grace is that in chapter after chapter, the economists of the report are forced to grudgingly admit that neither an extensively unionized workforce, nor good benefits, nor strong public services and employment have been in any way “barriers” to employment growth or economic performance over the past 20 years.

Sweden and Austria, with among the most unionized workforces and comprehensive systems of unemployment insurance and retraining, averaged annual rates of unemployment between 2-8 per cent (1980-1999), comparable to the lowest rates of the United States. Both countries also averaged rates of economic growth 2-2.5 per cent (1995-2002) that were again the same as those in the U.S.

Sweden and Denmark were also distinguished by much higher levels of employment among unskilled workers of 70 and 68 per cent respectively. By contrast, despite low levels of unionization and minimal employment protection laws, Canada and the United States did not exhibit particularly better levels of employment among unskilled workers, with only some 55-57 per cent of workers with less than high school education working in jobs.

Such observations show clearly that there really has been only one successful way of dealing with globalization and unemployment over the past two decades, and it has little to do with an “American” or (for that matter) “Canadian” way of reducing labour costs and retrenching public services so that businesses can reap more profit.

Returning to the economic nostrums of the 19th century, and failing to emphasize the success of alternative models that focus on unionization, good jobs and supportive public policies — as the OECD does far too often here in its recommendations — is only a way to make a growing number of bad jobs worse and our economies poorer.

People will need to speak up. Because if these standard liberal economic policies and the OECD’s version of “modern” social democratic policies do indeed become the new “normal,” they too will cause a tragedy for working people through lower wages, more part-time jobs and more poverty. Once enacted, trade unions and labour organizations will only be able to think after the fact about what they should have done to prevent their adoption.

And just like after a car wreck, once these policies are in place, people will find tears bring little solace.