By Ibrahim Arafa
KUWAIT, May 1 (KUNA) -- As the world marks May Day, or the International Workers' Day, the Director General of the International Labour Organization Guy Ryder called for dialogue among social partners -- governments, employers and laborers -- to find fair solutions for labor market problems.
"In these difficult times ... with political turbulence and economic problems around the world, it is more than ever important that governments, employers and workers join together not as opponents, not as enemies but as partners," the ILO chief said in an interview with KUNA and Kuwait TV.
"To firstly try to produce jobs and try to agree policies that will include people, young people particularly in the world of work, give them the chance for decent job, and secondly to find ways of talking together to find solutions which are fair." He underscored that social dialogue should not result in a winner and a loser.
"We need to try to find agreed solutions whereby everybody feels they come out with advantages and our countries as a whole advance." Ryder congratulated world laborers on their day, stressing the need to mark that important day and to highly recognize the importance of work in societies.
"We have no future except with the people working in producing the wealth upon which our future welfare depends," he said.
The ILO chief said that despite some positive developments in the past year, the labor world still awaits multiple challenges in the coming year due to the slow economic recovery and the tremendously high unemployment rates.
He called for offering more care for the worst off on labor markets such as domestic, migrant, rural or informal, and young workers.
He urged a special attention to women who are often either excluded from or disadvantaged in labor market.
"I really think that as we try to reduce the unemployment figures generally, we need to give a particular attention to these disadvantaged workers and young people," Ryder told KUNA.
"This biggest threat to our societies ... (is) not being able to offer a decent future and that means a decent job to young people. So I hope we will focus on these issues in the year to come." Ryder, however, believes that the labor world now has many promising opportunities to overcome challenges and achieve goals benefitting the labor market.
"We have more technical capacity to meet human needs, to get rid of poverty, to get rid of diseases. We have tremendous productive potential. We just have to organize our societies and our thinking to take advantage of these opportunities," he said.
As for the upcoming ILO annual conference, to be held in Geneva in June, Ryder stated that the meeting will bring together representatives of workers, employers and governments of 185 countries.
He unveiled that the conference's agenda features three main items: small and medium sized enterprises, formalization of informal economies and labor protection. He added the conference will also tackle the climate change and its impact on employment.
"We have to find a way - and its perfectly possible -- to reconcile the goals of combatting climate change and making sure that people have jobs to go to and have economic growth to produce better living," he said.
May Day is a celebration of the international labor movement around the world. It commonly sees organized street demonstrations and marches by working people and their unions throughout most of the world. It is a national holiday in more than 80 countries and is celebrated unofficially in many other countries.
It is the commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, when Chicago police fired on workers during a general strike for the eight hour workday, killing several demonstrators. (end) ibi