Decent Work: A Common Goal of Youth and Trade Unions

Prepared by the ILO's InFocus Programme on Skills, Knowledge and Employability and the Bureau for Workers' Activities, the leaflet is published ahead of a series of UN initiatives involving young people. These include a meeting on July 16 in Geneva betweenUN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, and Juan Somavia, Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and a High-Level Panel consisting of 12 eminent persons. Trade unions will be represented in the Panel by Bill Jordan, General Secretary of the Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Among the young people talking to the panel will be Tandiwe Munyanyi, a young woman trade unionist from Zimbabwe who will represent the trade union youth. Tandiwe is 23.
.
The ILO leaflet stresses efforts by trade unions to meet the concerns of young people, and the need for labour groups to adapt their strategies, language and structures to make them youth-friendly. According to figures published by the ILO, 66 million young women and men are unemployed throughout the world, accounting for 41 per cent of the 160 million persons who are classified as unemployed throughout the world.

"Decent Work: A Common Goal of Youth and Trade Unions" describes union demands for equal access to education and for investment in training as vital to break the vicious circles of poverty and exclusion. Similarly, as young women are the hardest hit by illiteracy and exclusion, action to fight discrimination in respect of education is also relevant to developing young workers' employability.

"Trade unions are powerful organizations and have a key role to play in shaping the present and future of our global economy", the ILO leaflet emphasizes. Adjusting school curricula to the needs of the labour markets, recognizing skills whether learned at schools or on the job, reducing the number of school drop-outs are among the "best practices" listed in the publication as improving transition from school to work,

But the traditional role of trade unions to promote better working conditions, reduce overtime and working time and expand social protection remains crucial. It can help create and provide more jobs, quality jobs, jobs for young people. Addressing the issue of the informal economy - which engulfs many young people, in particular women, in precarious and unprotected forms of work - is increasingly becoming a priority for the labour movement, the ILO explains. In addition, trade unions are called upon to play their part in the fight against HIV/AIDS which decimates the young and active populations of entire countries, in particular in Africa. The workplace can be a major "entry point" for information, prevention and rights campaigns. By proposing prevention measures in collective agreements and demanding "zero tolerance" of discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS at the work place and in society, or by advocating lower prices and greater availability of medications, trade unions are taking on specific responsibilities in the global campaign to fight the pandemic.

Yet central to all its efforts to defend young people and enlist their support is a need for the trade union movement to rejuvenate trade union structures, adapt language codes to this particular audience, be present in schools, education centres, clubs, and get involved in new fields of activities, like the e-economy, and new , often atypical, forms of work where conditions are poor and protection is weak.

Illustrated by examples of union-youth action in different parts of the world, the publication concludes: "to better defend the interests of young workers, unions must first convince them to join the trade union ranks." And not forget that today's youth is tomorrow's negotiating strength.

For more details contact: Gyorgy Sziraczki (ILO InFocus Programme on Skills, Knowledge and Employability) tel.: +4122 799 70 97 or: sziraczki@ilo.org or Luc Demaret (ACTRAV), Tel: 41 22 799 7233, E-mail: demaret@ilo.org

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)