ITUC calls on all governments to adopt laws and reforms to close the persistent global gender pay gap of over 20%.

Systematic discrimination, undervaluation of women’s work and their disproportionate share of unpaid care work are the overarching root causes of the gender pay gap.

The disparity is even higher for women with multiple and intersecting identities and in sectors where women are predominant, such as health and care where the gender pay gap is 24% and most of the top earners are men.

This is compounded by women’s exclusion from accessing paid decent work. The labour force gender participation gap remains stuck at 27% and the majority of women are in precarious and informal jobs with inadequate minimum wages and limited or no access to social protection.

Furthermore, the gender gaps have widened due to the disproportionate employment and income losses for women due to the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read ITUC’s article

The global erosion of trust in the global institutions is the direct result of non-delivery on the most crucial challenges that face humanity such as inequality, poverty, and climate change. South-South Cooperation can play a vital role in reinvigorating multilateralism. Beyond its horizontal engagements it has already begun supporting and enriching processes, institutions and norms-building at the global level. However, changing the superstructures that have discriminated against many developing countries will require a strategy that involves prioritising, coalition-building and coordination.

Read the article of the South Centre

A new social-democratic era depends on the high, progressive taxation which made the postwar decades so successful in the west.

Read the article by Johann Pall Johannsson

I’m feeling outraged, with a strong sense of déjà-vu. From my vantage point in the United Kingdom—where inequality and social injustice are in particularly sharp focus—we’re on the brink of yet another social and economic crisis. Even more so than in the rest of Europe, energy prices and the cost of living are rocketing.

Yet what is happening at the top? What are our leaders doing? Why are some people, yet again, making eye-watering financial gains while others face destitution and a real fear of being cold and hungry this winter?

Read the article by Kate Picket

Fifty million people were living in modern slavery in 2021, according to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery . Of these people, 28 million were in forced labour and 22 million were trapped in forced marriage.

The number of people in modern slavery has risen significantly in the last five years. 10 million more people were in modern slavery in 2021 compared to 2016 global estimates. Women and children remain disproportionately vulnerable.

Most cases of forced labour (86 per cent) are found in the private sector. Forced labour in sectors other than commercial sexual exploitation accounts for 63 per cent of all forced labour, while forced commercial sexual exploitation represents 23 per cent of all forced labour. Almost four out of five of those in forced commercial sexual exploitation are women or girls.

Modern slavery occurs in almost every country in the world, and cuts across ethnic, cultural and religious lines. More than half (52 per cent) of all forced labour and a quarter of all forced marriages can be found in upper-middle income or high-income countries.

State-imposed forced labour accounts for 14 per cent of people in forced labour.

Read the ILO Report Forced Labour and Forced Marriage

As the cost of living soars, defending the living standards of workers and their families has become the primary concern of trade unions.

EU Energy Ministers meeting to-day!

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Rampant inflation, driven by profit-gouging by powerful corporations that control energy, transport, food and other vital commodities is sending yet more workers and their families into poverty.

More than half of households are struggling to get by and 10% are unable to meet the cost of essentials.

The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have had dramatic impacts on supply of goods, and corporate profiteering from these crises continues unchecked.

This comes on top of a decades-long decline in the share of prosperity…

Read ITUC’s article

The strings attached to an IMF loan, which officially go by such deceptively innocuous-sounding names as “conditionalities” and “structural adjustment programs,” have in the past created such social chaos across the globe, all the while making claims that it develops the economy of whatever host country it attaches itself to.

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