ILO Leader Sees Opportunities in the Crisis to Strengthen Democratic Actions

“The crisis can be an opportunity if democracy responds to popular demands. In this sense, functionaries should fulfill their role by showing capacity and by responding intelligently,” said Virgilio Levaggi during his speech at the V Meeting of Labor Directors of Central American and the Dominican Republic.

“These solutions should reestablish the dynamism of employment to break the vicious cycle in which the loss of jobs translates into the reduction of consumerism and consequently a drop in productive investment which generates more loss of jobs,”

The Regional Director of the International Labor Organization (ILO) gave a speech titled: “The Economic Crisis and the Centralization of Productive Solutions as Generators of Employment and Decent Jobs.” He said that the current context of confronting the crisis can be an opportunity to respond by demanding and creating employment and decent jobs.

He indicated that these productive solutions require a stimulus for the demand for policies and strategies in the intensive use of manpower in public investments and support for productive, profitable and sustainable businesses through the services of development, technical assistance, and worker training programs.

“These solutions should reestablish the dynamism of employment to break the vicious cycle in which the loss of jobs translates into the reduction of consumerism and consequently a drop in productive investment which generates more loss of jobs,” he emphasized.

He stressed the need for active development policies for the job market in order to help the most affected workers by increasing their employability and business capacity as well as preparing them for reconversion and reinsertion into the workplace.

“It is important to increase efforts to train workers for business ventures and not necessarily for salaried jobs. This effort requires supporting self-employment programs and the development of social protection policies that promote the application of social security coverage and salary protections,” said the director of the ILO.

Mr. Levaggi expressed praise for the role of labor observers in a general sense, in that they provide detailed and important labor market information “that facilitates being able to observe what is happening with the workers, and their families, who have become unemployed.”

He pointed out that a product of the global financial situation, nearly 4 out of 10 workers are entering the job market as individuals, especially on their own, and that this has a much larger tendency to be happening in rural areas especially in Guatemala (47%), Honduras (45%) and the Dominican Republic (48%).

He explained that associated with the deceleration and the drop of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in developing economies, such as in Latin America, the number of poor workers in developing countries will likely increase by around 200 million people, reverting to the levels of poverty seen in 1997. “The year 2009 will be the first year in which global poverty will increase, since the UN Millennium Development Goals were launched.”

“With a labor force of nearly 21 million workers, the sub-region of Central America and the Dominican Republic are confronting the current global crisis with pending setbacks in terms of structural weaknesses in their labor markets when it comes to generating decent jobs which is seen in a primary deficit of formal jobs,” he stressed.

One characteristic that distinguishes the labor market in this sub-region, according to Levaggi, is its heterogeneous character although with important differences between countries and including the interiors of each of the countries where less than half of the employed (48%) are involved in salaried jobs, with the exception of Costa Rica and Panama where the averages reaches 68% for Costa Rica and 69% for Panama.