Where the social contract is in place and governments respect the role of social partners in negotiating solutions, where social protection, minimum living wages, collective bargaining, vital public services, industry policy and fair taxation are in place, inclusive growth is possible. While these societies are not immune to the challenges of climate, rapid digitalization, robotics or automation, collective responsibility for negotiating just transitions can give us answers.
Tragically there are few of them: the Nordic countries, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, perhaps Japan, and there is some renewed hope in Portugal. The agreement of a new social pillar in Europe holds promise, but the legislation that will ensure implementation must be delivered.
The harsh reality is that the bulk of the global economy is mired in a model of self-destruction with the lives and livelihoods of working families in the center of this storm.
When governments fail to regulate for decent work to protect their people against exploitation, to ensure corporates taxes are paid to enable them to provide education and health for all people, to invest in vital infrastructure or care to create jobs, they create mistrust. And when people see no dividends from democracy, that mistrust includes democratic institutions.
According to the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) 2017 Global Poll, 85 percent of the world’s people want the rules of the global economy rewritten, and people unanimously believe that the world would be a better place if governments were more committed to jobs and decent work; caring for children, the elderly and the sick; human and labor rights; democratic rights and freedoms; shared prosperity; and action on climate change.
More of the same with a fresh lick of paint and a slicker sales pitch will not cut it. Free trade that allows slavery, includes informal work under the pretense of independent entrepreneurs, depends on paying a poverty wage, guarantees neither freedom of association nor collective bargaining rights, obscures responsibility for safe work and encourages tax evasion is an immoral construct.
If this is modern-day multilateralism, then it must fall.
Equally the Bretton Woods institutions must be reformed. We call on G20 governments to sponsor broad consultation towards the development of new global architecture with trade unions, business and civil society.
This architecture must drive the implantation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a commitment to Just Transition measures required to protect workers and communities in the global shifts from climate action and technology developments.
Policies that support privatization, constraints on minimum wages and collective bargaining, cuts to pensions and other social protection measures simply mean the destruction of people’s hope and security. The stability and development these institutions are charged with is missing in action.
And while the UN must reform, it cannot be at the expense of the core mandate of rights that emerged as a foundation for the social contract of the last century and the hope of peace and prosperity.