Strong social dialogue and robust industrial relations institutions will be critical to ensuring that artificial intelligence (AI) and other structural changes lead to better jobs rather than greater inequality across the Asia-Pacific region, Yuki Otsuji, specialist for workers’ activities at the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Decent Work Team for South Asia and Country Office for India, said on Thursday.
Speaking at a labour conference, Otsuji said the region was undergoing multiple transitions simultaneously, driven by technological change, demographic shifts, climate change, evolving business models and changes in global supply chains. These developments, she said, were creating new opportunities but also significant uncertainty for workers and employers.
She also pointed to political transitions in several countries, including Nepal and Bangladesh, saying they had added to the challenges facing the region.
“We saw that in Nepal and Bangladesh the government has changed. Not just that, but we have a few countries that are facing a very unfortunate situation and we are living in such a challenging era,” she said, noting that the Asia-Pacific region remained highly diverse in terms of its economic structures and industrial relations systems.
Otsuji said AI was transforming not only the nature of work but also the way work was organised, managed and supervised.
“AI is increasingly being used in recruitment, work allocation, performance monitoring, skill development and even decisions related to promotion and termination. From the ILO perspective, AI is not simply a technological issue; it is fundamentally a governance and industrial relations issue,” she said.
She added that the ILO advocated a human-centred approach to digital transformation to ensure AI improved productivity and workplace safety while addressing concerns around job displacement, algorithmic bias, data privacy, work intensity and widening inequality.
“AI has enormous potential to improve productivity, innovation and workplace safety, but it also raises important challenges, including job displacement, algorithmic management, data privacy, bias, increased work intensity and widening inequality if its benefits are not shared. In this era of AI-driven transformation, industrial relations become more important than ever,” she said.
Speaking on Convention No. 193 on decent work in the platform economy, she said many countries had voted in favour of the new convention and expressed hope that more ILO member countries would ratify and implement it.
“Many countries voted for these new conventions and, hopefully, some countries will ratify them and implement them accordingly,” she said.
India abstained during the final vote on Convention No. 193 at the International Labour Conference in June, even though the Indian workers’ delegate and the Indian employers’ delegate voted in favour of its adoption.
Otsuji said informality continued to be one of the defining characteristics of the region. Around 66 per cent of employment in the Asia-Pacific region—equivalent to about 1.3 billion workers—is informal, while 97 per cent of enterprises are micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), she said. The prevalence of informal work and enterprises makes it more difficult to organise workers and employers and ensure that all voices are represented in social dialogue.
She also noted that trade union movements differed significantly across countries, with varying levels of fragmentation and collective bargaining structures. Countries with well-established social dialogue institutions were better placed to manage labour market transitions, she said, while weak or fragmented representation limited constructive industrial relations. At the same time, she highlighted positive developments across the region, including stronger labour administrations, expanding collective bargaining mechanisms and the establishment of new tripartite institutions.
