“Worldwide unemployment and poverty have grown enormously since the UN launched the World Day for Social Justice in 2007, and governments have failed to fix the problem. Powerful financial and business elites are still dictating policy and ordinary people continue to bear the burden. Even in the Middle-East and North Africa, where millions have risen against dictatorship and repression, anti-democratic forces are gaining ground and preparing to turn the clock back,” said ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.

With key gatherings of world leaders in 2012, notably the June Rio+20 Summit and the G20 leaders’ meeting in Mexico, the ITUC is concentrating its demands on combined action to create jobs, and tackle poverty and climate change. Priority demands include regulation of banks and finance to make them focus on growth in the real economy, fair taxation to provide vital revenue for governments, and initiatives to support the poorest and most vulnerable. Building a global social protection floor to promote inclusive growth and provide income security is a cornerstone of the ITUC’s programme to ensure social justice and create economic demand.

“We welcome the UN’s support for a social protection floor, and it is time now for governments to put it in place. Setting minimum national standards for income and access for all to health, education and other vital services will lift people out of poverty and help stop the erosion of living standards and turn around the growth in inequality. This must be coupled with genuine respect for workers’ rights to union representation and collective bargaining, in order to turn around the enormous and growing levels of inequality across the world,” said Burrow.

To see the special UN website