TUAC NEWS

dc ej es gf mt sd


Towards Sustainable Jobs: Outcomes and Action Points of the ITUC Congress 2014

23/05/2014

  • Speech on Sustainable Jobs Sessions' Outcome_ENGLISHpdf
  • Speech on Sustainable Jobs Sessions' Outcome_FRENCHpdf

The Third ITUC Congress in Berlin this week included important discussions on the serious economic situation confronting workers and agreed an important set of action points for the coming four years to achieve sustainable jobs, union growth and respect for workers’ rights worldwide.

TUAC was actively engaged in all sessions and events and specifically worked on the issues discussed in the sub-plenary on sustainable jobs. You can find more on these and other sessions on the ITUC Congress webpage: http://congress2014.ituc-csi.org/

Mody Guiro of the Senegalese trade union centre CNTS, who had led through all of the debates on sustainable jobs, summed up the main outcomes at the final plenary of the congress. Please find his speech in French and English in the download bar on the right.

The Action Points on Sustainable Jobs are as follows:

A sustainable future requires new economic thinking. Central to this is our commitment to action for jobs which requires:

Full Employment
  • Advocate for national jobs targets including women’s and youth economic participation.
  • Campaign for targeted investment in infrastructure, quality public education, the green economy, the care sector and quality apprenticeships.
  • Extend solidarity for unions fighting to defend and extend collective bargaining so as to support an income led recovery.
  • Support for unions organising for minimum living wages and a social protection floor.
  • Organise to reduce precarious work and to formalise informal work.
  • Build broad-based alliances to protect workers’ right to decent, adequate and secured  retirement incomes, extend pension coverage in the population and support worker education and awareness of future pension challenges.
  • Expose the failed policies of the IMF and other international institutions where they deny collective bargaining or affect jobs, wages or social protection.
  • Support GUF campaigns for global framework agreements.
  • Campaign for effective implementation of OECD guidelines and real consultation and participation rights for workers within multinational enterprises.
  • Draw attention to power imbalances in  exploitative global value chains and take action to counterbalance inequalities.
  • Support an initiative for popular education in economics for our members and campaign for economic alternatives

Climate action

  • Mobilise nationally for an ambitious global agreement in 2015.
  • Demand and engage in social dialogue to ensure investment in industrial transformation, universal access to breakthrough technologies and just transition measures.
  • Organise workers in green jobs to ensure decent work.

UN Post-2015 Sustainability Goals

  • Ensure all governments support the inclusion of ‘full employment & decent work’ and the ‘social protection floor’ in the new UN goals.
  • Support goals for universal access to quality education, gender equality and climate justice.

A new trade and investment model

  • Secure investment of workers’ capital in long-term investments in the real economy and increasingly in green technology, infrastructure and services.
  • Hold asset managers to account, making sure that workers’ pension money work for the people, not for financial intermediaries and bankers.
  • Campaign for labour rights and environmental standards as pre-requisites for investment of workers’ capital.
  • Campaign to oppose investor-to-state dispute settlement and unaccountable regulatory cooperation mechanisms in investment treaties and trade agreements.
  • Reinforce the enforceability of labour standards and oppose neoliberal trade agreements .
  • Practically demonstrate solidarity with countries seeking policy space to industrialise.
  • Mobilise to tame corporate power and realise rights and safety in supply chains by using all available international instruments.

Inclusive Development

  • Support the regional development networks for advocacy and partnerships
  • Strengthen our advocacy at international level, especially towards the UN system to secure sustainable and inclusive development in the 2015 agenda and beyond.
  • Improve trade union partnerships based on our principles on development effectiveness
  • Increase multilateral solidarity initiatives and support south-south cooperation initiatives.