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	Half of the world’s workforce earns less than $2 a day by International Trade Union Confederation   Half of the world’s workforce earns less than $2 a day. 12.3 million women and men work in slavery. 200 million children under the age of 15 work instead of going to school. 2.2 million people die due to work-related accidents and diseases every year.   Add to this massive global unemployment, the lack of social protection for the majority of workers employed in the “informal economy”, and the violation of trade union rights and the consequences of the lack of decent work are clear.   October 2011   With unprecedented public demand for decent jobs, and pressure mounting on banks and the finance industry, the 2011 World Day for Decent Work today features over 400 actions across more than 80 countries.   “More than 200 million people worldwide are unemployed according to official figures, and hundreds of millions more lack decent, secure jobs.   “People’s rights at work are under attack as never before, and governments lack the vision and commitment to fix a global economy which is failing working people,” said ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.   Actions on the World Day for Decent Work this year aim at tackling “precarious work” – the deepening trend towards casual, temporary and insecure jobs, often with little legal protection. Young people and women in the workforce are most likely to be affected, with their incomes and earning potential suffering as a result.   “Decent work – rights at work, job creation policies, social protection and social dialogue involving unions and employers – is crucial to turning the global economy around and generating the tax revenues for governments to tackle the fiscal situation.   “With the G20 leaders soon to meet in France, we are looking to them to take the steps needed and to stop following the failed policies which put the vested interests of banks and finance ahead of people’s lives and livelihoods,” said Burrow, who is addressing a special conference in Amsterdam today to mark the World Day.   Events include some 50 activities across Japan, with marches, conferences and youth meetings in several African countries and meetings and mobilisations throughout Russia and Ukraine. A series of activities in Latin America includes initiatives by trade unions in Peru and Chile to get official government recognition of the World Day for Decent Work.   Aug 2011   Plan B for the World Economy, by Christian Kellerman. (Extract)   Crises will continue to be the norm rather than the exception if we keep on working with the dysfunctions of current capitalism. Many of us will be unable to live a decent life under conditions of increased insecurity, inequalities and pressure in terms of wages, jobs, raising children and providing for old age. An excessive degree of unequal income distribution and personal insecurity is not only detrimental to a good life; it is also economically dangerous and inefficient.   The reasons for economic crises and increasing inequality, which are symptom and root of personal and systemic insecurity and inefficiency alike, are manifold. Finance has played a crucial role in most of the economic crises we have experienced since the 1990s. Financial markets are both gigantic amplifiers of imbalances within and between our economies and a root of imbalances themselves. Illuminating the cracks in finance is therefore the logical starting point for the Plan B of fixing our current capitalistic system.   The excesses of finance are only one part of the fundamental problems economies and societies are facing and which have contributed to the recent crisis. There are at least three dimensions of instability which are related to finance but go beyond the narrow instabilities of the financial system.   First, imbalances between different sectors within economies have escalated. One expression of this is highly indebted private households as well as governments, as a consequence of real-estate and other bubbles which were fuelled by the financial system. Second, international imbalances have never been as big as they are today. Third, together with financial deregulation the shareholder-value principle of corporate governance became dominant. This led to a short-term orientation of management and high bonus payment for management at the cost of long-term sustainable development of companies and firms.   Besides these developments, the radical market globalisation of the last decades led to a huge increase in wage dispersion and an ever-growing low-wage sector which had not been seen since the early times of capitalism before the First World War. Labour markets in almost all industrial countries became more deregulated while at the same time trade unions became weaker. In many cases economy-wide or sector level collective bargaining was eroded. Firm-based wage negotiations or individual working contracts without any collective agreements started to dominate.   Increasing inequality is a phenomenon which can be found in almost every country. High inequality does not only provoke a feeling of ‘unfairness’ in and between societies; it also hinders social mobility and has negative impacts on health and productivity. Hungry wolves do not hunt best – in fact, the very opposite is true for present day economies.   The American dream of high social mobility within a society and the opportunity for anyone to become rich if they work hard enough is in fact little more than a mirageToday, mobility within society is more of a reality in the Nordic countries of Scandinavia where equality is higher than in the Anglo-Saxon world of capitalism.   Capitalism has more problems: in the past, it led to a very special type of technology, production and consumption growth which is blind to ecological problems and the fact that natural resources are limited. Prices systematically fail to adequately incorporate ecological dimensions and the deterioration of nature.   Prices also give the wrong signals for the direction of innovation as well as of production, consumption and the way we live. After experiencing a number of regional ecological disasters in the past century, the world is now heading for a global ecological disaster, unless fundamental changes take place very soon. This makes the search for solutions very complicated: the present crisis is not only a deep crisis of traditional capitalism, but it has emerged at a time when a deep ecological crisis is also evolving.   A global Plan B should therefore include three interrelated dimensions. First, the model should be ecologically sustainable: preventing global warming, changing to a renewable energy basis and preventing other problematic developments such as a reduction in biodiversity.   Second, it should be formed in such a way that the growth process is not jeopardised by either asset-market bubbles or goods market inflation or deflation, and does not result in the excessive indebtedness of individual sectors or even whole economies, thereby leading inevitably to the next crisis.   At the same time, such a model should promote innovation and, therefore, technological development necessary both for solving ecological problems and, in the medium and long term, increasing labour productivity and so holding out the possibility of growing prosperity for all. Third, it is critical that all population groups have a share in social progress. Inequality of income and wealth distribution must be at politically and socially acceptable limits.   At the core of Plan B is a more equitable income distribution. It is crucial to reverse the negative changes in income distribution and grant all population groups an adequate share in the wealth created in society.   * Christian Kellermann is the Director of the Nordic Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) in Stockholm. Visit the related web page
	Food shortages in Afghanistan by Integrated Regional Information Networks   August 2011 (IRIN)   Ongoing drought in northern, northeastern and western Afghanistan is likely to push 1.5-2 million more people into food insecurity this autumn, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP). This is in addition to the seven million country-wide already facing food shortages.   The Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) is reporting a failure of the rain-fed wheat crop, which accounts for about 55 percent of the total domestic wheat yield.   Irrigated wheat, which tends to yield more per hectare, has also been affected by the drought. The average wheat yield (without fertilizers) on irrigated land is about 2.7 tons per hectare (3.5 tons with fertilizer), versus only 1.1 tons on rain-fed land, according to MAIL.   In a normal year Afghanistan produces 4.5 million tons of wheat and around one million tons are imported. The shortfall of 1.9 million tons of wheat this year means more will either have to be imported or secured from other sources.   "Satellite derived rainfall estimates indicate that most of Afghanistan had an untimely and inadequate rain and snow season this year. As a result, there will be heavy losses in rain-fed wheat crops, underperforming irrigated wheat crops, poor pasture conditions, and low income earning opportunities in northern Afghanistan and the central highlands this year," said the US Agency for International Development"s FEWSNET.   Increased need due to the drought comes as WFP is already facing a severe funding shortage for its existing programmes in Afghanistan.   "WFP had originally planned to feed more than seven million Afghans this year, but currently has the resources to reach less than four million," WFP spokesman Assadullah Azhari told IRIN in Kabul. He said additional funds would be required to cover the new drought-related needs.   President Hamid Karzai also expressed concern about the drought at a cabinet meeting on 30 July: "The current drought in certain provinces is hugely damaging to the life of people and their livestock."   Sultan 35, a farmer in Paghman District not far from Kabul, has been trying to truck in water for his wheat crop from a water source more than 10km from his village.   "All the water sources including the underground water have dried up in my village and now I need to pay a tanker to bring me water," he told IRIN in Kabul. "I feel so sad. After two months my wheat is still only 20cm tall."   He said that if he had had sufficient water for irrigation, his wheat crop would have been almost ready for harvest now. Even with expensive trucked-in water he would only get 20 percent of his normal crop, he added.   According to MAIL officials, assessments are under way in drought-affected areas of the north, northeast, the west and the central highlands to determine exactly how many people will require food assistance and for how long.   Much of the looming wheat shortfall will be covered by government reserves and commercial imports. But additional humanitarian assistance may be required to support an estimated 1.5 to 2 million drought victims, according to WFP.   Karzai called on the ministries of commerce, finance and MAIL to take extra measures, and import wheat from India to try to meet needs.   WFP said the USA had cut its funding of WFP activities in Afghanistan by more than two-thirds since 2009. "But we continue to appeal to donors for the support that will allow us to ensure all those in need of help in the coming months are assisted," said Azhari.   "The areas affected by drought are hard or impossible to reach by road during the winter. So it is critical to get food assistance in place early, before those people are cut off by snowfall," he warned. Visit the related web page
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