The following is the introduction by Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary, to the Global Unions' Publication
"Getting the World to Work-Global Union Strategies for Recovery" as a response to the world crisis.
There is no
escaping the despair caused by recession and economic decline. Across the world millions of workers and
their families are suffering because they cannot keep their jobs and cannot get
work as the deepest recession since the 1930s begins to bite.
The misery of mass unemployment
is felt everywhere. In the United
States job losses began in the first days of
2008 and accelerated after the financial crash in October with 3.3 million jobs
lost in the last six months alone. There
are fears that unemployment will reach 12 per cent.[1] In Europe
the jobs crunch is just becoming visible. The European Commission predicts a
jobless rate of 9.5 per cent next year.
Many economists fear it will be higher.
All the predictions
are gloomy. With production falls in Japan and the emerging Asian
economies included, the International Labor Organization predicts an increase
in jobless figures of 50 million across the globe. Even this is thought to be
an optimistic figure. Workers face the ordeal of a slump that has no precedent
in their lifetimes.
At this critical moment,
trade unions are mobilising. They have a vision for the world economy that goes
beyond tinkering with regulation and repairing broken models of free trade.
They argue that it is time to forge a new policy landscape that will create a
fairer and more sustainable world economy for future generations.
It is a vision that fits
with the history of our time, arguing for the elimination, once and for all, of
extreme capitalism and the unrestrained greed that have perverted so much of the
global financial system.
In this special
publication, the Global Union Federations, working with the Trade Union
Advisory Committee to the OECD and the International Trade Union Confederation,
set out alternative strategies for the global economy that are focused on
getting people back in work and for a recovery plan based on humanitarian
values.
These arguments,
adopted by the Council of Global unions, were put before world leaders in Washington in November 2008 and were on the table again
at the meeting of the Group of 20 in London
in April 2009. Put simply, unions demand a change of direction and a break with
the greed, self-interest and inequalities of the past. They insist that
governments put people first for a change.
The publication can
be accessed at the Global Unions' website at www.global-unions.org.
[1]Economist March 14th 2009
