A decent life starts with decent work

Today is World Day for Decent Work and to mark the day the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union is pushing the message of Fair Rights, Fair Pay and a Fair Deal for workers here and around the world with their “They Stand for Greed/We Stand for Decent Work” advertising campaign.

World Day for Decent Work is about union members from around the world drawing attention to shared issues and highlighting the fact that globalisation isn’t just about international finance but about all workers from all nations taking part in the global economy and benefiting from it fairly.

This year the theme is “precarious work”, a term used to describe work such as contracting and third-party labour hire that frequently involves few meaningful work rights or job security but has grown significantly both internationally and in New Zealand over the last two decades.

EPMU national secretary Andrew Little says the growing trend of shifting responsibility for employees, including their wages and conditions, away from the business that actually uses the work is about driving down wages and living standards.

“They call it flexibility but it’s a device to disempower workers, to make it harder for them to negotiate with the real user of their labour.

“It’s just another part of the culture of corporate greed that has been the basis of business life for so long and that has now been totally exposed in the collapse of the finance industry worldwide over the last few months.

“The same people who have been so cavalier about global credit and finance are the same people who for decades have been telling governments to deregulate labour markets to allow more casual and labour hire arrangements even though jobs like this are uneconomic for so many who have them.

“If we want to get the world economy back on track, then decent and dignified working arrangements that allow families to survive economically are a start.

“Our advertising highlights the link between the mistreatment of workers and the attacks on their rights and the collapse of the financial markets, and that link is corporate greed.

“World Day of Decent Work is about underscoring the fact that globalisation should be about all workers around the world getting a share in the world’s wealth, not just the privileged few.”

The EPMU’s advertisements are running in the Dominion Post, the Press, the Waikato Times and the Auckland community newspapers. Posters are being run in the Auckland CBD and on worksites nationwide.

A copy of the newspaper advertisements can be downloaded here:

http://www.epmu.org.nz/assets/Work-Rights/Print-DOM.pdf

A copy of the colour poster can be downloaded here:

http://www.epmu.org.nz/assets/Work-Rights/Poster-A4.pdf

ENDS

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