Here’s What the World Labor Movement Is Saying to President Obama and Asian Leaders
The global labor movement and the AFL-CIO are urging President Obama and other world leaders meeting in Singapore at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to take strong stands on issues of jobs, trade imbalances, currency policy, workers’ rights and climate change.
With 59 million people expected to be unemployed worldwide by the end of the year, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other trade union leaders called on the G-20 countries, which include China and Japan, to continue to press for a coordinated global economic strategy to stimulate new jobs to ensure a real recovery. China’s stimulus package has been significantly larger compared to the size of China’s economy than the U.S. stimulus and has been credited with driving China’s rapid recovery.
Today Is World Day for Decent Work
 |
|
Today is World Day for Decent Work, and union members in more than 100 countries are mobilizing to address the global economic and employment crisis and demand fundamental reform of the world economy.
The deepest global recession since the 1930s has led to a jobs crisis with millions of people out of work. The International Labor Organization (ILO) predicts that as many as 50 million more workers could be kicked out of jobs worldwide in the next year and could lead to a dramatic increase in the number of working poor.
Live online coverage of the activities around the world, including videos, photographs and messages from events in every continent, will be broadcast on a special website, www.wddw.org, which will be updated via a 24-hour live feed.
Global Unions: G-20 Made Progress, But Not Enough
 |
||||
|
The G-20 Summit, which ended recently in Pittsburgh, made progress in some areas, but failed to completely address the overwhelming need to create new jobs now, according to leaders of the global union movement.
Trade unionists around the world will continue to pressure their governments to stimulate the global economy to put people back to work. Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), said that while he is glad the G-20 agreed to put jobs at the heart of their economic recovery agenda, big questions remain in some key areas.
With the global jobs crisis still worsening, a meeting of G-20 labor ministers to take place in early 2010 will be a key focus for the global trade union movement in the coming months.
The G-20 labor ministers’ meeting must push the maintenance and creation of decent jobs even higher up the agenda, with implementation of the ILO [International labor Organization] Jobs Pact as a central objective. The international trade union movement must be given a seat at the table in this meeting, and we will be carrying forward our intensive efforts with governments, the ILO and other global institutions to make sure it and the June G-20 Summit in Canada deliver the results that working people demand.
Global Unions: Put Jobs First at G-20
 |
|
At the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh this week, the world’s leaders need to focus on the urgent need to create millions of new jobs and reform the global financial and trading system.
More than 50 trade union leaders from around the world, including AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, will meet with the G-20 leaders to press the case for a coordinated global economic strategy to stimulate new jobs to ensure a real recovery.
With 59 million people expected to be unemployed worldwide by the end of the year, Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), says:
Governments must do much more to arrest the plunge in jobs as tens of millions of people, especially young people and those in precarious jobs, find themselves facing a future without work. Coordinated global action to maintain and create jobs is required, and this has to start with the Pittsburgh Summit. Any talk of recovery has little meaning until people are getting back to work.
Check Out New ‘Green Jobs, Safe Jobs’ Blog
Say “green jobs” and the phrase conjures up visions of Earth friendly, energy saving, pollution-free, high-skilled, well-paid jobs. In short, the type of green jobs for which we in the labor movement and the Obama administration are striving to create.
But as the new blog “Green Jobs, Safe Jobs” points out, if the corporate world is allowed to control and manipulate this growing sector of the global economy, workers and the environment are at risk.
Left to its own devices, the green economy could deliver the same unhealthy mix of hire-and-fire, poison-and-pain jobs that remain a blight on the reputational landscape of the not-so-green economy.
Colombian Activist Yessika Hoyos Receives AFL-CIO Human Rights Award
 |
||||
|
||||
Seven years ago, Colombian union leader Jorge Dario Hoyos was assassinated. But his death did not silence his family’s search for justice. His daughter, Yessika, followed in her father’s steps, risking her life in pursuit of workers’ rights and challenging the power of corporations and a government that does little to protect the rights and lives of workers.
Today, the AFL-CIO presented Yessika Hoyos with the 2008 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award for “her extraordinary courage, her dedication to the cause of workers’ rights in Colombia and her commitment to ending impunity for those responsible.”
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, a friend of Dario Hoyos, praised Yessica as “an incredible woman.”
As a lawyer, she has fought tirelessly to bring her father’s killers to justice and to end the cycle of violence in her native land. Even though the low-level trigger men responsible for her father’s death have been prosecuted, the masterminds who ordered Dario Hoyos’ death have not been found—an all-too-common scenario in the deadliest country in the world for union members.
AFL-CIO Demands Release of Burma Activist Suu Kyi
 |
|
The AFL-CIO is demanding the immediate and unconditional release of Burmese democracy activist and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Burma’s military dictators today sentenced her to 18 months of house arrest after her conviction on trumped-up charges.
Suu Kyi, 64, was arrested in May 2009, just six days short of completing her most recent house arrest. She was taken to prison after a U.S. citizen swam a mile across a lake to her home and stayed overnight, which violated the terms of her house arrest. She has been under house arrest a total of 14 of the past 20 years.
In a statement, the AFL-CIO said:
The verdict in her so-called trial is a travesty. Her continued imprisonment is extremely dangerous to her future well-being as she is reportedly in poor health and in need of medical care.
Unions Pushing for Global Jobs Policy
 |
The global union movement is pushing hard to make sure the issue of jobs is high on the agenda when leaders of the G-20 governments meet in Pittsburgh in September.
Around the world, unemployment and lack of decent work are devastating economies. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that another 20 million women and men soon could be out of work.
A plan developed by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) at the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) calls for G-20 governments to spend at least 2 percent of their nation’s gross domestic product on solving the crisis. Currently, European nations are spending no more than 1 percent. The plan urges a coordinated international recovery and sustainable growth plan to create jobs.
Ghana’s Union Movement Joins Call for Employee Free Choice Act
 |
|
With President Obama visiting Ghana this weekend, unions in that nation asked him to support workers’ freedom to form unions around the world.
The Ghana Federation of Labor (GFL) joined with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) for a July 7-8 conference on union rights around the world, with a focus on the Employee Free Choice Act, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the role of U.S. labor law in setting standards for the world.
These international unions are concerned about the rise of U.S. union-busting firms and the spread of union-busting tactics around the world, as well as U.S. firms creating downward wage pressures and corporate-dominated global institutions forcing development models on nations around the world that put profits ahead of workers.
Global Unions: G-8 Didn’t Do Enough to Address Economic Crises
 |
|
The leaders of the world’s top economies failed to adequately address the three major economic crises facing the world—unemployment, climate change and development, according to leaders of unions around the globe who had called on the G-8 summit last week in Italy to take strong action to stimulate the global economy.
Said John Evans, general secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD) :
There are no explicit commitments to making the necessary resources available for achieving employment and social protection goals, although the focus on the need to protect the tax base represents a welcome step in this direction.
