Davos 2008: Creating Decent Jobs - Re-regulating Financial Markets
Statement of Labour Leaders to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2008 - Davos, Switzerland, 23-27 January 2008
25/01/2008
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As the global economy falters workers and their families suffer
1. Economic growth throughout the world is set to take a hit,
with recessions a real possibility in some major economies. The
stockmarket plunges in recent days underline the fragile state of
the global economy, and the failure of policy makers to heed danger
signs which have been present for some time. The losers are the
workers whose real wages have declined over the last half a decade
and the homeowners who are forced to leave their residence, not the
bailed-out bankers and financiers who triggered the crisis. As the
global economy, primarily in the OECD area, takes a downturn, the
people in both developing and developed countries who have lost out
on the last decades of globalisation and technological development
will see their misfortune manifested in the era’s new social
structures. Income is distributed ever more unevenly, with income
inequality rising sharply in both developed and developing
economies, creating new divides between capital and labour as well
as between a small elite of top income earners earners and the
rest. At the same time, the people behind the new face of
capitalism –
private equity managers, hedge funds and a rising number of
traditional business people – are reintroducing anachronistic forms
of corporate governance, where hierarchies are sharpened and worker
management cooperation to build sustainable firms and workplaces
abandoned. In employee-employer relations, dialogue is being
replaced with diktat. And in the distribution of the fruits of
joint work, the principle of fair sharing is out, swapped with that
of the owners and managers of capital taking it all.
2. If the global economy is to regain its strength, become more sustainable, and be able to overcome the challenges of climate change, cooperative labour relations must be restored. Global labour is committed to its role in this equation. In the following it sets out where it sees the largest need for action and what it proposes as the first collaborative steps and solutions. ...
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