How to Build Better Future for Work in the Americas?

To achieve this is necessary to act in multiple fields and develop policies of productive development, promote an adequate environment for creation and the development of enterprises, as it appears in the declaration approved at the meeting in which participated governments, employers and workers.

The principles and fundamental rights in work, the respect to union freedom and collective negotiation, promote the transition from informal to formal economy, environmental sustainability and face the effects on employment from climate change, are among the topics in the document.

The declaration also refers to salary policies as a central element to reduce poverty, discrimination and inequities in income; to the importance of promoting youth employment, accelerate eradication of child labor and promoting gender equality.

In the opinion of Jose Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, regional director of ILO for Latin America and the Caribbean, the great achievement of the Meeting is the declaration that lists a number of key and priority policies in which work must be done to move the pins of social indicators, of the labor market, reactions to new technologies and their impact on the labor world.

In his opinion, the fact that delegates agreed to that vision of policies is very powerful, -obviously from what is in paper and the implementation- there is a guide, a route list agreed by the three parties.

The emphasis on development of productive policies is important, as the objective is to create new growth motors, above all whwen besides the faults we have in unemployment and lack of jobs for youth, there are these technologies that you can produce the same or more in industry with less workforce, he said.

Workers’ representatives rejected in the event the implementation of neoliberal policies, which provokes the loss of social achievements.

Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento, secretary general of the Cuban Central Trade Union (Central de Trabajadores de Cuba), expressed that in the years gone by since the last ILO meeting held in 2014 in Peru, the region experienced the impacts of an articulated imperialist offensive against progressive governments and their integration strategies.

The neoliberal policies provoke a sequel of impoverishment, threats to peace and the loss of social conquests of great working masses, favoring the exponential increase of external debt in several countries, he emphasized.

Over 26 million persons are unemployed in Latin America and the Caribbean, where ILO considers fundamental a collective effort to put into practice development productive policies to actívate growth motors. (Prensa Latina)