Governments must tame corporate power as low wages and insecure jobs threaten global recovery
19 May 2014 10:44 AM
Workers across the world
are losing their faith in national governments who they believe are putting the
interests of big corporations ahead of their own, according to a new global
poll published yesterday (Sunday) by the International Trade Union
Confederation (ITUC).
Released on the opening day of
the third ITUC world congress in Berlin – at which TUC General Secretary
Frances O’Grady is due to speak – the poll, conducted for the ITUC
by market research company TNS, questioned ordinary people in fourteen
countries which together make up half the world’s
population.
The ITUC poll
showed:
- Four in ten (41 per cent) of
those questioned have been unemployed, had their working hours reduced in the
last two years or have a family member with a similar
experience.
- More than four in five (82 per
cent) say their wages have fallen behind the cost of living or remained
stagnant in the past two years.
- Four in ten (41 per cent) expect
their job to become less secure in the next two years and almost half (49 per
cent) believe the next generation will struggle to find decent
jobs.
- Over two-thirds (68 per cent)
think their government is doing a bad job at tackling unemployment, almost four
in five (78 per cent) think the economic system favours the wealthy, and more
than half those questioned (56 per cent) rate the current economic situation in
their country as bad.
- Three in five (62 per cent)
believe governments should do more to tame corporate power.
Commenting on the international
poll findings TUC General Secretary Frances
O’Grady said: “Improving economic data is all very
well but the rosy picture it paints is not being felt by most ordinary people
and their families.
“Hard-working households
keep hearing about the global recovery but believe it must be happening to
someone else as their wages still don’t seem to go far enough, they need
to borrow to buy anything substantial and they stopped saving years
ago.
“Where jobs are being
created, too many are the insecure, zero-hour kind with erratic wages and a
lack of decent prospects. Any global recovery won’t start to feel real to
people at work until they can recover the spending power they lost during the
crash, and employers start offering more decent, permanent jobs that have good
rates of pay and a proper future.”
ITUC General
Secretary Sharan Burrow said: “The global
economy needs co-ordinated action to raise living standards around the world.
Seven years after the economic crisis there are still more than 200 million
people unemployed and many more struggling on low wages. Meanwhile governments
are in the grip of corporate power and are failing their
people.
“When people increasingly
fear for the next generation, it should be a warning for governments to act.
People want their governments to reduce the gap between rich and poor, ensure
fair wages, and increase job security.”
NOTES TO
EDITORS:
- The results of the poll,
conducted in January in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France,
Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Africa, the UK and the US represent
the views of more than 3.7 billion people, or half the world’s
population.
- For a copy of the ITUC Global
Poll 2014 go to:
http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/ituc_global_poll_2014_en_web.pdf
- The ITUC world congress opens
in Berlin on Sunday 18 May and runs until Friday 23 May 2014. The ITUC
represents nearly 180 million workers in 161 countries and territories from 325
national unions.
- Speakers over the six days
include Sharan Burrow, ITUC President Michael Sommer, Abdes Ouaddou, a former
Moroccan national football captain who has played football in Qatar, Guy Ryder,
Director General of the International Labour Organisation and TUC General
Secretary Frances O’Grady.
- On Monday lunchtime (12.20pm
BST) Frances is taking part in a debate about the issues raised by the poll
alongside the leaders of the trade union movement in the US and South Africa.
The event will be streamed live http://congress2014.ituc-csi.org/
- In each country approximately
1,000 people were interviewed, yielding a total of 14,006 respondents. All
interviews were conducted online. TNS Opinion carried out the field work from 8
to19 January 2014.
Contacts:
Media enquiries:
Liz Chinchen, TUC M: 07778 158175 E: media@tuc.org.uk
Gemma Swart, ITUC M: +32 479 06 41 63 E: gemma.swart@ituc-csi.org