Industry News

ILO: Global Jobs Pact for the rescue

Faced with the prospect of a prolonged global increase in unemployment, poverty and inequality and the continuing collapse of enterprises, the International Labour Organization (ILO) recently adopted a Global Jobs Pact designed to guide national and international policies aimed at stimulating economic recovery, generating jobs and providing protection to working people and their families.

“Urgent action is required now to boost economic recovery and job creation whilst preparing for a greener, more balanced, fairer and sustainable global economy” said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia. “This pact provides a path crafted together by all members of the ILO and based on tried and tested policies.

The Global Jobs Pact was adopted following strong support voiced during a three-day ILO Global Jobs Summit by heads of state and government, vice-presidents and ministers of labour, worker and employer representatives and other leaders.

At the same time, the summit also provided strong support for an enhanced involvement of the ILO in the G20, in follow-up to its meeting in London last April which, with regard to employment and social protection, called on the ILO “working with other relevant organizations, to assess the actions taken and those required for the future.”

“It is you, the actors of the real economy, that are going to take us out of this crisis,” Somavia told some of the 4,000 delegates from the 183-member State ILO attending the annual International Labour Conference.

“You represent workers and families, employers and enterprises, and governments. World leaders have told us that change is needed, combining broad opportunity, jobs, protection of working people with the type of investment and growth that will create a long-term solution to this crisis. This is our challenge for today, our mandate for the future.”

The Global Jobs Pact amounts to the most urgent and wide-ranging response to an economic crisis ever adopted by the ILO, which marks its 90th anniversary this year. It calls on governments and organizations representing workers and employers to work together to collectively tackle the global jobs crisis through policies in line with the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda.

The pact was adopted against a backdrop of a recent report by the ILO showing an unprecedented increase in unemployment globally and a persistence of very high levels of poverty.

Somavia said the ILO estimated that even if an economic recovery began to take hold this year or the next, a global jobs crisis could linger for six to eight years. He also said that with 45 million new entrants to the global jobs market annually – most of them young women and men – the global economy would have to create some 300 million new jobs over the next five years just to go back to pre-crisis levels of unemployment.

The Global Jobs Pact proposes a range of crisis-response measures that countries can adapt to their specific needs and situation. It is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but a portfolio of options based on successful examples, also designed to inform and support action at the multilateral level.

The Pact urges measures to retain persons in employment, to sustain enterprises and to accelerate employment creation and jobs recovery combined with social protection systems, in particular for the most vulnerable, integrating gender concerns on all measures.

“Employers support the Global Jobs Pact, as a significant contribution to the policy responses necessary for recovery,” said Daniel Funes de Rioja, Employer Vice-Chairperson, Committee of the Whole on Crisis Responses.”

Somavia said the ILO would immediately begin to provide assistance to constituents wanting to implement measures under the Pact as well as work with other multilateral agencies. He also stressed that the Pact is not about how much more governments can spend, but how they spend it.

“We need to give life to this commitment,” said Somavia. “We all have a collective responsibility to the future. Together we can make good on our common aspirations. We have a mandate to act now, and working together we will certainly succeed.”