With 200 million unemployed people around the world, Occupy Wall Street, union protests and the Arab Spring the need for change is clear. The G20 is not heeding the call to put the world on a new economic path.
At the UNI World Executive Board annual meeting, union leaders from around the world discussed their plan to get back the global economy back on track to create jobs, protect bargaining rights and reform the financial system despite massive resistance from corporations and world leaders.
“We are in fight for our existence, for what we stand for and the people we represent,” UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings told the annual meeting of the World Executive Board. “As the world is once again rocked by financial turbulence and contagion we must draw the conclusion that the financialisation of globalisation is a force for economic destruction and continuing economic crises.”
The union leaders responded enthusiastically to the call to action, vowing to mobilise members to join protests and to take political action to ensure their governments are listening to the voices of working people.
Jennings was part of a global union delegation that met with the G20 Labour Ministers in October and met with French President Sarkozy in Paris right before the G20 to press their case. Jennings also travelled to the G20 meeting in Cannes at the beginning of November where the trade union delegation pressed its case with world leaders. The aim was to jolt the G20 into action for a social dimension to globalisation. The final G20 communiqué did refer to jobs, social protection, rights and social cohesion and while recognising the need for growth it did not provide the financial fire power to get growth moving.
The trade union organisations and the business organisations from the G20 countries issued a joint statement calling on G20 leaders to focus on employment and social protection.
They welcomed the G20 initiative to create a task force to fight youth unemployment. Both groups said they would promote the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights adopted by the Council of Human Rights of the UN, which calls on businesses to promote human rights and apply due diligence measures in their operations.
Looking ahead to the next G20 meeting in Mexico in June 2012, the focus must be on creating jobs and economic growth, promoting social and economic rights for the world’s workers and reforming the financial system.
As governments are on the attack against working people, passing austerity measures that put greater burdens on those with the least resources and who are not to blame for the current economic problems. The result of these measures, coupled with the collapse of the global economic system and corporate policies that deny workers their fair share, is greater economic inequality.
“We have most unequal distribution of wealth in modern times,” Jennings said.
At the same time, those who are responsible for the crisis have been fighting regulation at every step of the way.
“Mighty finance is fighting financial reform,” Jennings said. Instead of accepting the fact that they need a new compact with the people they have re-launched their attacks on any attempt at reform, he said.
Jennings pledged to continue the fight for global economic reform. He said that only by working together and mobilising their members to take action will UNI and its member unions have a chance of fighting the current wave of austerity around the world.
