Labor & Employment Law

World Day of Social Justice, Feb. 20

By James Parks

The global union movement will mark Feb. 20 as the World Day of Social Justice by calling for a new economic model that emphasizes jobs, not profits.

The current system of globalization has created the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Social justice has been denied to millions of men and women hit by unemployment or marginalized into the ranks of the working poor, says Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).  

If anything, the global crisis has served to show up the serious fault lines in the current model of huge capital accumulation through risky, unregulated financial transactions, and its failure to spread the wealth in a fair and sustainable way, through the creation of decent jobs and livelihoods for all.

The ITUC supports a new global economic model built around the principles in the International Labor Organization’s (ILO’s) Global Jobs Pact, which include comprehensive measures to stimulate employment growth and provide basic protections for workers and their families.

You can read the ITUC statement here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on February 19, 2010 (boomark / email).