Workers organizations are critical to achieving the Decent Work Agenda.
Ensuring their voices are heard matters more than ever
as we tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the world of work.
Two new reports from the ILO will help achieve this.
The active participation of workers and their organizations
can help us recover better and build forward together.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues and friends,
I commend the International Labour Organization,
and all of you for your hard work in launching this trade union reference manual.
The UN system is committed to human-centered progress and policies
that are fully aligned with the ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work.
Workers organizations are critical to promoting full and productive employment,
decent work for all, social dialogue, social protection,
and partnerships as key elements of national and global policies
and so much more.
Your initiative can help accelerate progress in this decade of action
to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals.
As we look to the challenges ahead,
I invite workers' organizations to fully engage with the UN resident coordinators,
governments and employers organizations.
Your voice is central to integrating decent work and economic growth
into all national development policies,
trade and investments, and budgetary processes.
Your input and partnership are also vital in ongoing common UN
common country assessments and cooperation framework processes
guiding UN work on the ground.
I encourage you to participate in Agenda 2030
voluntary national report processes at the regional and global levels
to guarantee that workers' concerns and priorities are adequately addressed
including in social protection floors.
All of this is fundamental to delivering decent work,
dignity, justice and security to working men and women across the world.
The United Nations cooperation framework offers unions a unique opportunity
to influence national development policy.
Now, as we are all experiencing with great difficulty, we are in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
And as you know, this pandemic has negated much of the progress
that had been made to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in many countries.
As a result, the United Nations cooperation framework offers unions the opportunity to influence,
the opportunity to change the current course of things so that we find ourselves in a post-COVID world
which is better than what we knew before the pandemic.
We know that even before COVID-19 there was a crisis,
inequality creating anger and despair,
unemployment for too many, a breakdown in formal employment
with 60% of workers in the informal economy
and indeed, of course the climate emergency.
So we want a new social contract,
a social contract with five key demands, jobs, jobs and jobs,
climate-friendly jobs,
rights with a with a floor of rights and minimum income for all workers
and indeed we want to see social protection, universal social protection
and the solidarity of a global social protection fund.
Equality, income, gender and race,
which means we can have an inclusive society
where development and peace underpin a world with people at the center.
At ILO ACTRAV, we are intensifying our efforts
in supporting trade union initiatives
that are meant towards expanding the capacities
and influence for policymaking at national level
through the corporation frameworks, Agenda 2030 and the SDGs,
also the voluntary national and regional review processes.
COVID-19 has also shown the urgent need for trade unions to develop
their own internal sustainable development strategies
and this is also on top ACTRAV's work agenda.