Sharan Burrow

Investment in jobs at a time when millions are unemployed can only be a good thing: all the better if the jobs help us shift from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy.

T-Mobile U.S.A. is one company that uses fear and intimidation to scare workers away from union representation.

South Carolina is a 'right to work' state - a misnomer of a phrase, as the laws limits union representation of workers. It does does not guarantee workers a job or fair wages and conditions.

We must make both our distributional and democratic systems work for our communities.

If the impoverishment and community fragmentation continue, it is not a stretch to predict urban wars sparked by inequality, unemployment, and the breakdown of dialogue between leaders and citizens.

We need a multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance, not vested interests in making citizens pay for formerly free services or restrictions to their capacity to share information.

Politically, we have seen the impact of social media organizing people through the Arab Spring.

Large swathes of people losing faith in democracy is a dangerous thing. Conflict, desperation, totalitarianism are the products of that loss of faith.

Governments that fail to provide jobs to those who are willing and able to work begin to lose their legitimacy and will face the anger of the electorate.

Anyone who has lived in an area with high unemployment knows how it erodes social bonds, lowers the resilience of the unemployed and their families, and damages the prospects of the next generation.

We all eat breakfast in the morning, we all go to sleep at night, and we all want our kids to have opportunities that we didn't.

Poor people around the world spend more on energy because they lack the capital to buy a more expensive energy-efficient product.

Programs that reduce energy and water use and increase green agriculture and transport have huge job-creating potential.

Football, or soccer as it is known, is a game of two halves. It's a game with rules and a referee. FIFA, the governing body for football, follows neither the rule of law or has the oversight of a referee.

The concept of 'green jobs' or a 'green economy' is often attacked as the work of the Grimm Brothers by those wedded to the grim science of free-market economics.

We need investment in green economy infrastructure; public services, training and education; and a multilateral plan to create youth job opportunities.

It's never been clearer that unrestrained market forces do not produce the kind of societies we aspire to - economically stable and socially inclusive, where citizens have access to secure jobs with the dignity of a fair wage and a welfare safety net.

As economists bandy about terms like 'recapitalization,' 'credit lines,' and 'liquidity,' families are facing brutal cuts to their social services and welfare payments, losing their homes, wondering how their kids will make their way in the world.

If you think the dominant orthodoxy - shrink your economy, render workers jobless, impoverish families, and still grow - is an oxymoron... then you would be right.

Creating a Financial Transactions Tax would go a long way to curbing short-term speculative trading, including high-frequency trading.

Limiting the destructive risk-taking by large financial firms and banks which are 'too big to fail' is needed.

When we see the banks get bailed out with seemingly no consequences while ordinary people pay the price with job and wage cuts through austerity measures, who could blame a person for wondering where the loyalties of their elected leaders really lie?

Banks don't come with an internal switch that says, 'Enough! Let's slow down a little.' Or, 'Let's just share this wealth around for the benefit of the community now.' That's the job of government.

Until you separate the speculative behaviour of the financial sector from the real economy and the financing of the real economy, then we are not going to see the kind of stability or the capacity to drive genuine, income-led growth as opposed to debt-fuelled, speculative behaviour.

You'd never plan a career like I've had.

With global rules for global supply chains, we can end corporate greed.

Growing inequality is exacerbated by the companies who simply treat workers as commodities, and our governments are cowered by their demands to perpetuate this model of greed.

Many communities are already devastated by poverty. Increasingly, that poverty is born of the greed of a global trading system.

Trade unions have stood at the front lines of struggles for democratic change and social justice throughout history. In many countries, we are the organized voice of oppositions to governments operating at the behest of corporate power and vested interests.

It seems evident that the IMF has learned nothing from its inequality-inducing policies during the 1980s debt crises in Latin America nor from its recession-deepening response to the East Asian crisis of the late 1990s. In both regions, the IMF has become synonymous with making bad situations worse.

Work has always been influenced by technology and will continue to be.

Technology can be used to make people's lives easier, to reduce inequality, to facilitate inclusion, or to solve intractable global problems, but without dialogue and governance, it can be used against humanity - the choice on how we use technology is ours.

Workers in Myanmar must have an effective remedy when their rights are violated.

Democracy is rarely easy, nor swift.

As universal a truth as the rising and setting of the sun each day, the global economy needs people.

Corporate greed, corporate bullying cannot be tolerated - it's time for a global rule of law to guarantee fair trade, rights, minimum wages on which people can live with dignity, and safe and secure work.

Disproportionate corporate power over governments is giving license to the greed that denies workers even minimum living wages. It is also seemingly a license to allow the sheer brutality of treatment of working people at the base of the supply chains.

Workers know first-hand how corporate capture of government is undermining their rights and freedoms as citizens.

There's not much more of an honour - to work for, and with, working people.

If political leaders want respect, they will begin by enforcing the global rule of law.

The competitive pressure to produce, buy, and sell to our global multi-national companies is so intense that contractors in supply chains are motivated to pay low wages, intensify exploitative conditions, keep workers fearful with insecure work contracts, or simply sack workers who have formed a union to fight back.

Global supply chains are founded on a Darwinian model that rewards employers who treat working people as less than human.

Technological developments are changing the way we live, and there is much talk of digitalisation and the disruptive business models enabled by smart phones, tablets, computers, and the 'Internet of things.'

We may be living in a world of disposable electronics, but working people are not disposable commodities.

We know an organised workforce cannot be enslaved, but when governments fail their citizens and allow corporations to escape the rule of law, slavery can flourish.

A binding treaty and mandatory human rights due diligence would clean up slavery in global supply chains. Workers demand it, and consumers demand it.

Where workers are not free to change employers or leave the country without the permission of their employer, workers are, de facto, in forced labour.

We know how to build economies. It requires investment in jobs. The biggest medium-term multiplier is infrastructure.

We cannot grow jobs without investment; we cannot grow economies if we don't earn.

The cycle of jobless youth, uncertainty about the future, depressing consumption, and weak investment and stresses on both the supply and demand side of economies are all thorns in the wheel of capitalism.