Labour is not a commodity.
— Sharan Burrow
Trade unions have stood at the front lines of struggles for democratic change and social justice throughout history. In many countries, we are the organized voice of oppositions to governments operating at the behest of corporate power and vested interests.
Technology can be used to make people's lives easier, to reduce inequality, to facilitate inclusion, or to solve intractable global problems, but without dialogue and governance, it can be used against humanity - the choice on how we use technology is ours.
As universal a truth as the rising and setting of the sun each day, the global economy needs people.
Workers know first-hand how corporate capture of government is undermining their rights and freedoms as citizens.
The competitive pressure to produce, buy, and sell to our global multi-national companies is so intense that contractors in supply chains are motivated to pay low wages, intensify exploitative conditions, keep workers fearful with insecure work contracts, or simply sack workers who have formed a union to fight back.
We may be living in a world of disposable electronics, but working people are not disposable commodities.
Where workers are not free to change employers or leave the country without the permission of their employer, workers are, de facto, in forced labour.
We cannot grow jobs without investment; we cannot grow economies if we don't earn.
T-Mobile U.S.A. is one company that uses fear and intimidation to scare workers away from union representation.
Inequality is a poison that is destroying livelihoods, stripping families of dignity, and splitting communities.
Politically, we have seen the impact of social media organizing people through the Arab Spring.
No country can afford to lose a generation to unemployment.
Poor people around the world spend more on energy because they lack the capital to buy a more expensive energy-efficient product.
The concept of 'green jobs' or a 'green economy' is often attacked as the work of the Grimm Brothers by those wedded to the grim science of free-market economics.
As economists bandy about terms like 'recapitalization,' 'credit lines,' and 'liquidity,' families are facing brutal cuts to their social services and welfare payments, losing their homes, wondering how their kids will make their way in the world.
Limiting the destructive risk-taking by large financial firms and banks which are 'too big to fail' is needed.
Growing inequality is exacerbated by the companies who simply treat workers as commodities, and our governments are cowered by their demands to perpetuate this model of greed.
It seems evident that the IMF has learned nothing from its inequality-inducing policies during the 1980s debt crises in Latin America nor from its recession-deepening response to the East Asian crisis of the late 1990s. In both regions, the IMF has become synonymous with making bad situations worse.
Workers in Myanmar must have an effective remedy when their rights are violated.
Corporate greed, corporate bullying cannot be tolerated - it's time for a global rule of law to guarantee fair trade, rights, minimum wages on which people can live with dignity, and safe and secure work.
With global rules for global supply chains, we can end corporate greed.
Global supply chains are founded on a Darwinian model that rewards employers who treat working people as less than human.
We know an organised workforce cannot be enslaved, but when governments fail their citizens and allow corporations to escape the rule of law, slavery can flourish.
Out of the fires of desperation burn hope and solidarity.
The cycle of jobless youth, uncertainty about the future, depressing consumption, and weak investment and stresses on both the supply and demand side of economies are all thorns in the wheel of capitalism.
South Carolina is a 'right to work' state - a misnomer of a phrase, as the laws limits union representation of workers. It does does not guarantee workers a job or fair wages and conditions.
If the impoverishment and community fragmentation continue, it is not a stretch to predict urban wars sparked by inequality, unemployment, and the breakdown of dialogue between leaders and citizens.
Large swathes of people losing faith in democracy is a dangerous thing. Conflict, desperation, totalitarianism are the products of that loss of faith.
Anyone who has lived in an area with high unemployment knows how it erodes social bonds, lowers the resilience of the unemployed and their families, and damages the prospects of the next generation.
Programs that reduce energy and water use and increase green agriculture and transport have huge job-creating potential.
We need investment in green economy infrastructure; public services, training and education; and a multilateral plan to create youth job opportunities.
If you think the dominant orthodoxy - shrink your economy, render workers jobless, impoverish families, and still grow - is an oxymoron... then you would be right.
When we see the banks get bailed out with seemingly no consequences while ordinary people pay the price with job and wage cuts through austerity measures, who could blame a person for wondering where the loyalties of their elected leaders really lie?
Many communities are already devastated by poverty. Increasingly, that poverty is born of the greed of a global trading system.
Work has always been influenced by technology and will continue to be.
Democracy is rarely easy, nor swift.
Disproportionate corporate power over governments is giving license to the greed that denies workers even minimum living wages. It is also seemingly a license to allow the sheer brutality of treatment of working people at the base of the supply chains.
If political leaders want respect, they will begin by enforcing the global rule of law.
Technological developments are changing the way we live, and there is much talk of digitalisation and the disruptive business models enabled by smart phones, tablets, computers, and the 'Internet of things.'
A binding treaty and mandatory human rights due diligence would clean up slavery in global supply chains. Workers demand it, and consumers demand it.
We know how to build economies. It requires investment in jobs. The biggest medium-term multiplier is infrastructure.
Football, or soccer as it is known, is a game of two halves. It's a game with rules and a referee. FIFA, the governing body for football, follows neither the rule of law or has the oversight of a referee.
We must make both our distributional and democratic systems work for our communities.
We need a multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance, not vested interests in making citizens pay for formerly free services or restrictions to their capacity to share information.
Governments that fail to provide jobs to those who are willing and able to work begin to lose their legitimacy and will face the anger of the electorate.
We all eat breakfast in the morning, we all go to sleep at night, and we all want our kids to have opportunities that we didn't.
Investment in jobs at a time when millions are unemployed can only be a good thing: all the better if the jobs help us shift from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy.
It's never been clearer that unrestrained market forces do not produce the kind of societies we aspire to - economically stable and socially inclusive, where citizens have access to secure jobs with the dignity of a fair wage and a welfare safety net.
Creating a Financial Transactions Tax would go a long way to curbing short-term speculative trading, including high-frequency trading.
