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A message from UNI Global Union General Secretary Philip Jennings to mark World Day for Decent Work 2012 and to thank affiliates for their support.

"The World Day for Decent Work this year falls on a Sunday, traditionally a rest day in Western culture. For the 220 million unemployed around the globe every day is the same and for them there is no rest and no peace of mind. Let’s not forget them in our demand for decent jobs and full respect for worker’s rights. Only by creating real jobs can we get them back to work. We are breaking through and only by continuing to organise and grow unions will we be in a position to help the millions more workers who are predicted to join the services industry in the next five years. We have an obligation to the current workforce and the unemployed who are relying on the labour movement to change the rules of the game and create real jobs with a future.

Two days ago we launched the UNI Walmart Global Union Alliance in Los Angeles. It’s goal is to stop Walmart making a mockery of decent work and effectively putting many of its staff in a position comparable to being unemployed. Walmart's cynical policy of low wages coupled reduced hours is destroying families as systematically as unemployment. This new UNI Alliance will give the power back to the workers through a campaign of global solidarity and action. When UNI and its affiliates marched striking Los Angeles Walmart workers back to work on Friday they won a victory: Walmart management publically stated there would be no retaliation against these workers. This is a victory for decent work and we will not stop there. Our current campaigns, Call Centre Action Month and our focus on promoting work life balance are other ways that we engaging with multinationals who for too long have gotten away with putting profit before human dignity. We are highlighting unacceptable truths and fighting for change. It is not right that more T-Mobile workers are off sick because of stress than at work in some US call centres. We are taking the fight to the multinationals and shaming them into change. In the case of T-Mobile its Deutsche Telekom who must take responsibility for its US subsidiary as a parent must for a wayward child. UNI is ready to talk and negotiate. We have already signed more than 45 Global Framework Agreements with multinationals laying down principals to ensure decent work and respect for workers’ rights whether that worker be in the home country of that company or on the other side of the world.

The Day of Decent Work is a time for reflection but it is also a time to redouble efforts to make decent work the norm not the exception, a reality and not a dream. We are succeeding whether it is by forcing Prosegur to live up to its responsibilities in Paraguay or IKEA to rethink its policy in Turkey but much remains to be done and we can only achieve it if all of our affiliates and their wider networks unite and organise together. Unity is how we have succeeded in the past and it’s how we will succeed in the future. It is not only the workers of the world we are fighting for but the 220 million who will have no job to go to tomorrow morning and no way of providing for their families. Inclusion is key and that is why we are taking the message "Including You" on to Cape Town and our world congress in 2014."