Mercy Global Concern - 2006

MGC Briefing paper Number 2 - August 2006

“Promotion of Full Employment and Decent Work for All”

When looking at the issue of employment, it is essential to recognize the link between employment, poverty and social inclusion. We must examine both the macro and local issues. We need to see both the wood and the trees. Employment is clearly influenced by global economics and policies. The collapse of the rural economy, drift to the cities, the social condition of urban poor are intimately linked with global economic and trade policies. But local realities must also be taken into account in seeking ways to promote full employment and decent work for all. The needs of communities and of individuals can help or hinder people in accessing and fully exploiting employment opportunities.

We must be careful in our use of language. Everybody works, whether they are seen as being in formal or informal employment. People living in poverty wake up everyday and do what is necessary to feed themselves and their children. So much human activity is deemed not to be ‘work’. We need to be careful not to impose western or northern standards of decent work on other cultures.

1. Employment creation must be placed within a human rights framework.
   
   Employment is a basic human right. It is more than merely being able to earn a wage to support oneself or one's family. It becomes a door that opens up the chances to participate in and have some influence within my own society. Employment can open possibilities for social inclusion. Without decent work there is little chance of participating fully in society, and taking up one's rights and responsibilities. Central to the dignity of the human person is his or her being able to engage in work that reinforces that dignity and make it possible for them to engage with others in shaping the life of their community and nation.
   
   
2. Employment creation must be placed within a social development framework that is people centred and pro-poor.
   
   In addressing the theme of employment creation and decent work, it is vital that the integral approach of the Copenhagen commitments be recovered. The first of the commitments is to create an enabling economic, political, cultural and legal environment for social development. The second is directed to the eradication of poverty. The third is directed to promoting ' full employment as a basic priority of our economic and social policies, and to enable all men and women to attain secure and sustainable livelihoods through freely chosen productive employment and work.'
   
   Without a people centred approach to the goal of achieving full employment, any initiatives to that end are likely to leave people out and create further social alienation and problems.

SEARCH FOR UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR SOLUTIONS

Globalisation means that we experience the simultaneity or the co-presence of tendencies that are both universalizing and particularizing. Hence an approach on two fronts is needed.

Part of the approach to full employment and decent work requires global solutions based on multilateral cooperation.

•   International cooperation is needed to resolve the unjust global architecture of trade, market access and debt that underlie unemployment and poverty.
  
  
• A global environment supported by just and fair trade agreements, by the cancelling of crippling external debt of the poorest countries, and an enabling international financial environment require the cooperation of t he International Financial Institutions as well as developed nations.
  
  
• Unregulated neoliberal economic policies create superfluous wealth for the few while decreasing the number of jobs and basic services for the poor. The dominant economic model does not promote, even in developed economies, employment and decent work. We witness the phenomenon of jobless growth.
  
  
• The 2004 report on LDCs shows the economies of the world's 50 Least Developed Countries grew at 5.9 per cent because of high demand for natural resources and with increased aid. But it did not translate into more jobs that could start to reduce poverty.

Another part of the approach requires local solutions that address the specific needs of real people and real-life communities

• Governments, in developing national employment plans, ought to routinely include people living in poverty. This would foster social cohesion and release more creativity and energy. It is time to tap the creativity and genius of those most affected by lack of decent work and the means to live with dignity.
  
  
• Only if the people most affected are included will planning take cultural values and community needs and realities into account. This is where ‘many hands make light work'

STORY
There are many barriers to reaching full employment – childcare being one. Everyday, parents must make choices about their families and their work, and living in poverty adds to the stark consequences of these choices. Children are often forced to work to support their families. Mothers often feel that their children need them to be at home, like the case of a mother who lives in the Philippines , Aling Beth. She gave up her job of a few months when she realized she was beginning to neglect her teenage daughters. “Their school grades were beginning to slip, Aling Beth confided, as I found myself racing with my daughters each morning to get to work on time. They need supervision. My daughters are more important than my job.”

BARRIERS TO DECENT WORK:

We recognise the following as potential barriers that need to be considered in efforts to develop employment strategies.

• Language – if a person is not able to communicate with, to understand or be understood by others, then her/his chances for decent work are restricted.
  
  
• Culture – intergenerational unemployment can produce a learned inferiority that accepts as normal treatment that is abusive or disrespectful. People often need support and encouragement to discover their dignity, worth and initiative.
  
  
• Systems – large organizations and bureaucracies can make it almost impossible for people forced to live in poverty to know how to use or to ‘work' the system.
  
  
• Attitudes of receiving communities – the stranger is too often portrayed as a threat, a competitor, an outsider who is unwelcome

ENABLERS OF DECENT WORK:

We see these enablers as necessary but not sufficient conditions for full employment and decent work. Some examples of enablers are:

• Education opens people up to wider possibilities in their lives.
  
  
• Some level of social inclusion is essential in helping a person begin the journey to self-esteem and to an experience of personal mastery. From this grows a stronger sense that rights and responsibilities must coexist. Without a basic level of social integration we can expect inequalities to grow and social cohesion and harmony to suffer.
  
  
• Co-operatives can help to promote a sense of cooperation and inclusion with other people facing similar challenges. Membership of a co-operative can give people a sense of pride in their achievements.
  
  
• Micro-finance offers an opportunity for people forced to live in poverty to finds ways of exercising their entrepreneurship. Experience shows that this is especially true for women.