AMERICA’S WORKERS JOIN CALL FOR A WORLD DAY FOR DECENT WORK

Today America’s workers joined with trade unions in more than 100 countries in support of the International Trade Union Confederation’s call for a World Day for Decent Work. The AFL-CIO believes decent work standards are a key part of the solution to the global economic and jobs crisis. It means ensuring job creation and protection of workers’ rights, especially the freedom to organize a trade union and bargain collectively. It means ending discrimination, stopping child and forced labor and providing social security safety nets for those in and out of work.

At its recent convention the AFL-CIO strongly underscored its support for decent work for workers in the United States and around the world by unanimously passing a major resolution, ‘A Labor Movement Agenda for a Stronger, Cleaner and More Just Global Economy.’ The resolution affirmed the ILO’s statement ‘The Financial and Economic Crisis: A Decent Work Response’ and stressed the need for the global labor movement to promote the ILO’s Global Jobs Pact to help coordinate government efforts to respond to the employment crisis.

Significant priorities for the AFL-CIO include passage of the Employee Free Choice Act to enable workers to freely choose to have a union and collectively bargain in the United States and passing major health care reform that covers all families.

Following the convention, the newly elected leadership traveled to meet with working families around the country, leading up to the G 20 meeting in Pittsburgh. At the G20 President Trumka and ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder, along with other international trade union leaders, met with President Obama. They stressed the elements of the June 2009 ILO ‘Jobs Pact’ and the importance of enacting coordinated policies to create decent and environmentally sustainable work to combat growing unemployment, enact comprehensive and effective regulation of financial markets and promote the inclusion of key international labor standards in all assistance programs of the IMF and World Bank.