Decent work key to future development
Decent work key to future development
A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali
The International Labor Organization (ILO) lashed out on Friday at draft documents for the next World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, saying that the drafts failed to pay attention to employment and decent work, two essential preconditions for eradicating poverty and implementing sustainable development.
The ILO director general, Juan Somavia, contended that these labor issues should be focused on during the current preparatory committee meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
In his statement read out by his special envoy Allan Larsson during the ILO's roundtable discussion, Somavia stressed that the question of more and better jobs should be introduced to the Johannesburg strategy.
Somavia stressed that employment and decent work had always been the world's most important concerns, and they should also be the focus of efforts in pursuing sustainable development.
He noted that better jobs were badly needed by some 500 million working poor and an additional 500 million newcomers to the labor force over the next ten years, 97 percent of whom would be in developing countries.
"The growing global workforce should be seen as a potential and essential part of the solution to the challenge of reducing poverty and promoting social progress rather than as a separate problem to be dealt with later," Somavia said in his statement.
The 500 million working poor were part of the almost 3 billion people worldwide who lived on less than US$2 per day, mostly in developing countries, according to International Conference of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) data.
A participant from an India-based NGO explained that a decent workplace remained an elusive dream for workers in developing countries.
"Imagine a company located in Kenya, with raw materials from China, workers from Kenya and owned by Anglo-U.S. businessmen. The workers labor in a small, hot factory, with two small doors," the Indian participant said.
The preparatory committee (PrepCom) meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable Development was a good opportunity for the stakeholders -- government officials, NGOs and other major groups -- to work toward improving working conditions and promoting proper incomes for workers, said the ICFTU in its statement.
The ICFTU put forward priorities to be highlighted in the PrepComm, which could later be manifested into an action plan to be implemented after the World Summit in Johannesburg.
The priorities included putting pressure on developed countries to help developing countries tackle the poverty problem.
"The European Union, G-8 countries and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries must finally agree to take decisive action on poverty alleviation, for example, by halving world poverty by 2015," said the ICFTU.
The ICFTU cited other commitments that should be brought into reality by developed countries, including development assistance and debt write-offs for developing countries. Assistance by developed countries should target secure employment, which was the key to an effective strategy for poverty eradication.
Besides secure employment, lack of decent work -- in the form of occupational health and safety -- was part of the problems that should be addressed in a bid to achieve sustainable development.
"The improvement of the working conditions of workers should be the outcome of the World Summit and this must be enforceable," said K. Chetty, assistant director general of the South African Ministry of Public Health.
The issue was important since workers are a significant portion of the global population. Moreover, workers, most of whom were breadwinners, could become the front line messengers for improving global health and literacy, which were promoted by the Chairman's Text for the World Summit, she said.
Poverty and labor issues were included as social pillars of sustainable development. Poverty and social breakdown were believed to be stumbling blocks for people in adopting sustainable lifestyles.
Poverty and low economic growth, for example, had prompted the governments of developing countries to tolerate the operations of mining companies, disregarding the potential for environmental damage.