This is the WDDW statement to be handed over to the ADB in Manila on 8th Oct at 2.00pm.

World Day for Decent Work, 7th October 2007

The Asian and Pacific region is a vast and diverse region with huge population, rich social, cultural and historical heritages and, in its modern history, it has been a region with many challenges; the World War II, restoration from the destruction, movement of for independence and national autonomy, the Cold War, economic globalisation, Asian Financial Crisis, to name a few. The Asian Development Bank established in 1966 has been an important institution to support regional and national economic development. In the past two decades of robust growth, the region has grown to the center for global economic growth, and due to its population, rich human and natural resources and accumulation of capital for investment, the position of the region in the global economy will remain unchanged, despite occasional twists and turns albeit serious. However, when we look into social aspect of the regional development, various challenges persist such as poverty, child labour, gender inequality. In the last two decades, flexible labour market policy has drastically changed the world of work which has brought about high youth unemployment, migration, surge in informal economy, atypical and contract workers. Among others, Decent Work has yet to prevail. Decent work is the widely recognised principles at workplace; it includes Presence of International Labour Standards, Core Labour Standards among others, Employment Protection, Social Security and Social Dialogue at workplace. All these social problems and difficulties clearly underline the trend of growing inequality in Asia as evidenced by the ADB study, "Inequality in Asia 2007." Reality behind the robust economic growth in the region is that GINI index rises where economy develops, and social and political instability would be its consequence. In short, economic growth is not fairly distributed to working women and men, and they have to, in many cases, bear the brunt when crisis comes, with which they have nothing to do. Currently, the region is suffering from deep recession and serious employment crisis. Developing Asia should bounce back to 7% growth in 2010, however, uncertainty prevails, and as yet, there is hardly sign of self sustaining economic recovery. The ADB projects that 60 million in the region will remain trapped in poverty this year, to about 100 million 2010, a set back to ADB vision of an Asia and Pacific free of poverty. According to the ILO, the world unemployment would increase to 241 million toward the end of 2009. Working poor may rise to 1.4 billion globally. The ITUC-AP supports the governments’ massive stimulus programmes and strong assistance by the ADB to developing countries. The ITUC-AP strongly hopes that the region will recover from the crisis soon, and such a process should be guided by a new development principle, "Rebalancing Growth through Decent Work." We have to learn lesson from crisis in the past. Economic growth should be used for improvement of social infrastructure, social protection and purchasing power. Though the region has been significantly benefitted by export- led growth, we have to change the growth pattern to a balanced one with more emphasis on social development. The key factor is promotion of Decent Work in national development where trade unions are fully recognised as a social partner in leading distributive justice and institutional reforms for re-distributive justice by means of strong social safety nets and fair taxation and fiscal policy. There should be a paradigm shift from the current free market development pattern to a new phase of economic development paying active attention to social dimension of economic development.

The ADB and trade unions share broad areas of common concern; economic development, poverty eradication, establishment of social infra structures, education, gender equality, employment promotion, skill development, building a strong financial architecture in the region, to name a few, where we, trade unions can work together with the ADB in the region and nationally. We, the ITUC-AP, are pleased to note that the ADB has been recently paying more attention to social dimension of its operation as clearly indicated by Handbook on Core Labour Standards, Premier on Interacting with Workers’ Organisation, Social Protection Index and other policy documents. On the World Day for Decent Work, the ITUC-Asia Pacific expresses its strong hope that the ADB will further include Decent Work concept in its operations in the region and country consultations.

7th October 2009 ITUC-Asia Pacific