Returning from the Wage Indicator conference

Image via WikipediaYi Dinghong

I just returned from the Global Wage Indicator Conference in the Netherlands and have spent another half a day in touring around with the new team of Renmin University that is going to try to pull off the wage indicator in China.
It was an intensive conference, with many teams of the now 35 countries represented. Just like two year ago a much needed moment to get all the noses into the same direction. I was there as a back-up MC and showed a bit what can be done with a weblog during such a conference. I think I made a few convicts.
Team leader Yi Dinghong belongs to the Renmin University in Beijing, a university that has been heavily involved in the reforms of labor in China in the past few years. Apart from leading the wage-indicator team Yi Dinghong is also writing a study on the reform of China's only trade union, the ACFTU.
Getting wage information was an important global challenge, told a representative of the Internationa Labor Organization (ILO) at the meeting and getting them from larger countries like China and India is crucial. China has the huge advantage of a huge and fast increasing online population, unlike India, where the project sees enormous challenges, since so few people are online.
"More microdata and international comparison was crucial," says Yi Dinghong, and the wage-indicator can do that, unlike some of the existing commercial initiative in China. "Also we are able to improve our technology every year, something other projects cannot do."
Today we had a break and I toured with the Chinese team the Dutch tulip fields and the beautiful city of Leiden. Tomorrow, it should be business as usual again.
(I'm still adding material to the wage indicator weblog, but should have things in place after the weekend. Things were sometimes just going too fast.)