Your commercial news round-up: world economy, anti-strike laws, digital pound, clothing manufacturers, TikTok

Reading time: three minutes

Anti-strike laws, the digital pound and TikTok advertising are among some of the stories we look at in this week’s round-up. Read on for a summary of our commercial story picks of the week, but don’t just leave it there – how might these stories impact the industry, your shortlisted firms and their clients?

• The World Bank has forecast that the world economy will grow by just 1.7% in 2023 as it sits “perilously close to falling into recession”. The bank has cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the pandemic as two of the reasons for this, while also highlighting that the US, the Eurozone and China were all “undergoing a period of pronounced weakness”, exacerbating the issues faced by poorer countries.
   
• With strikes across several industries continuing to cause disruption in the UK, ministers are due to introduce new anti-strike laws in a bid to reduce their effectiveness. Under the bill, employers would legally be able to fire employees who ignore work notices that require them to work on strike days. The bill’s introduction follows unsuccessful talks on Monday between unions and ministers. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Grant Shapps said he hopes “that rather than actually using the legislation, we’ll be able to just get this safety and security in place for people”; however, Paul Nowak, the Trades Union Congress general secretary, raised his concerns that if this bill is passed, it “will prolong disputes and poison industrial relations – leading to more frequent strikes”. Unions are expected to challenge the legislation once it’s passed, with legal experts claiming that the new laws are unlikely to work.

• As tech continues to develop, the government are looking into the introduction of a “digital pound”, which would be used by households and businesses and sit alongside cash and bank deposits. Andrew Griffith said: “It is right to look to seek to embrace potentially disruptive technologies, particularly when we have such a strong fintech and financial sector.” Griffith spoke to the Treasury Select Committee and confirmed that a public consultation on the properties of this digital pound would be launched in the coming weeks. This move comes as central banks across the world develop or explore digital currencies.

• A new survey of 1,000 Bangladeshi clothing manufacturers, has revealed that major high street retailers, including H&M and Gap, are allegedly paying manufacturers below the cost of production. The report, produced by researchers from the University of Aberdeen and Transform Trade, found that between March 2020 and December 2021, 90% of high-street retailers were involved in “unfair practices”, 86% cancelled orders, 85% reduced prices of those agreed in the contract, 50% refused to pay for products that were in transit and production and 85% delayed payment for more than three months for dispatched goods.

The refusal to pay and delays in payments, coupled with rising inflation rates across the world, means suppliers are having to “cut costs some other way, and this is frequently passed on to their workers”. Muhammad Azizul Islam, professor in sustainability accounting and transparency at the University of Aberdeen Business School, said: “Two years on from the start of the pandemic, Bangladeshi garment workers were not being paid enough to live on, with one in five manufacturers struggling to pay minimum wage while many fashion brands which use Bangladeshi labour increased their profits.”

• The short-form video hosting service TikTok, which first launched ads in 2019, is offering cheaper advertising rates than other social media platforms as online marketing spend slows. The price to reach 1,000 impressions from video advertising on TikTok is almost half the price of Instagram Reels, one-third cheaper than Twitter and 62% percent cheaper than Snapchat, according to figures from 2022 shared by VaynerMedia. In addition, data from market intelligence company Pathmatics shows that from September 2022 to October 2022, the top 1,000 advertisers in the US upped their spending on TikTok by 66% to $467 million. Meanwhile, ad design platform Creatopy found that a video advertised on TikTok received almost three times more impressions than the same video on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. That said, user engagement was found to be higher on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

Check the News every Thursday for this weekly commercial news round-up.

Follow LawCareers.Net on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram for regular business news updates.