While only a minority of the world’s global workforce of more than three billion people is directly employed by large and emerging multinational employers, these companies often act as anchors for smaller firms and local entrepreneurship ecosystems. Therefore, in addition to their own significant share of employment, workforce-planning decisions by these firms have the potential to transform local labour markets through indirect employment and by setting the pace for changing skills and occupational requirements, World Economic Forum's recently published analysis Future of jobs 2016 says. Also, pay rises in the past were more than covered by productivity increases, a new trend might emerge in the Czech Republic where increased pay is no longer offset by productivity gains.

The Czech parliament's lower house called on the government on 17 December to ignore EU rules on labelling goods from Israeli settlements, joining Hungary in breaking ranks over the divisive regulations. The Czech Assembly said new EU guidelines which require the labelling of exports from Israeli settlements in the West Bank were "motivated by a political positioning versus the State of Israel", Reuters reported...