Asia needs more than jobs
 

Asia needs more than just jobs — it needs "decent work" that can lift people out of poverty and provide basic labor rights, governments as well as business and labor groups said Wednesday at a U.N. conference.

"We all agree that getting people access to work is the surest way out of poverty," said Athauda Senewiratne, Sri Lanka's minister of labor relations. New jobs, however, must "yield incomes above the poverty line."

Senewiratne addressed delagates on the second day of the International Labor Organization Asian Regional Meeting, its first in five years, dedicated to the theme of "Realizing Decent Work in Asia."

Government representatives from some 40 countries and territories as well as workers' and employers' organizations were participating. The Geneva-based ILO is the U.N. agency tasked with labor issues.

In a report Tuesday, the ILO said that economic growth in Asia has reduced the number of people who live on $1 a day by 250 million since 1990 to 600 million. Still, about 1.9 billion in the region live below the threshhold of $2 a day. Asia accounts for about 4 billion of the world's 6.5 billion people.

The phrase "decent work" is a buzzword at this meeting. It's a concept that includes the creation of jobs and businesses, social protections for laborers and workplace rights including organization and collective bargaining.

Decent work should "enable everybody to live a better life," Chen Lantong, vice president of the China Enterprise Confederation, an employers' organization, told delagates. "Employment is the principle need of people."

"The phrase 'decent work' over the last few years has received universal recognition," said Ashraf W. Tabani, president of the Employers' Federation of Pakistan. 'What's needed now is to address the 'decent work deficit'" — or the lack of such jobs in Asia.

The need for jobs in the region is acute. ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said Tuesday that just to keep up with growth in the labor force Asia will need to create about 250 million more jobs between now and 2015.

Delegates are also discussing issues such as youth jobs, migration, globalization, competitiveness and productivity.

The last category has become a particular concern for those who represent workers, under pressure to perform.

"For many New Zealand workers, productivity is a dirty word," Carol Beaumont of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, said in an address to the meeting. "Work harder for less."

The gathering is the ILO's 14th Asian meeting. Normally held every four years, it was scheduled for 2005 in Busan, a major South Korean port city, but tensions between South Korean labor organizations and the government over labor policy forced organizers to postpone it.