Background

This MEE sector includes different industries with diverse structures and trends.

At one extreme, the manufacturing of machine tools and other machinery and components mainly for other sectors have relatively high intensities of capital and skills and tend to be generally stable. They remain heavily concentrated in the OECD countries and, in some cases, dominated by a few large companies, such as ABB, Siemens, GE, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, which employ a large proportion of the OECD's MEE workers, who are among the best paid and most unionized. A second layer of industries, including consumer electronics, personal computers and related equipment, are in rapid evolution and relatively unstable, because of low entry barriers, fierce competition, and high elasticities of demand to changes in product prices and consumer incomes. The labour-intensive assembly segments of these industries are increasingly concentrated in lower-middle and low-income countries, often in export processing zones (EPZs), where poor working conditions and violations of basic workers' rights have been recurrent issues.

At the other extreme of the MEE sector, there is a wide range of labour-intensive metal-mechanical production, maintenance and repair activity, which is largely concentrated in small companies and shops. A significant portion of this activity in the low- and the middle-income countries is in the informal sector.