BRASILIA, Brazil, May 3 (UPI) -- The U.N. International Labor Organization says Latin America should seek more employment-rich growth of the economy and increase business competitiveness.
"We have to respond to our citizens' aspirations to decent work for all with specific measures, because that is what they express in every election and expect from democracy," ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said before the opening Wednesday of the 16th American Regional Meeting held in Brasilia, Brazil.
According to recent ILO reports, 23 million people face open unemployment and 103 million work in the informal sector in Latin America, creating an employment deficit in the formal sector of 126 million jobs. This is more than half of the 239 million people who make up the economically active population in the region.
A report submitted to the meeting, "Decent work in the Americas: An Agenda for the Hemisphere, 2006-2015," warns that this formal work deficit could increase to 158 million by 2015 unless the necessary steps are taken to generate more and better jobs.
The agenda lists four main challenges to increased employment: ensuring economic growth promotes employment for all; guaranteeing labor rights are effectively upheld and respected; adopting new social protection mechanisms suited to current conditions; and using the procedures to combat social exclusion.
The report underscores that labor markets are not at present benefiting as much as was expected from economic growth, saying: "We cannot simply depend on growth to generate employment for those most in need of it and to reduce extreme poverty in the region."
Somavia argued, "the objective of creating decent work should be explicitly incorporated into national development strategies," including the generation of specific labor policies.
