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16 Sep, 2013

Global Unions launch website to mark Oct 7, World Day for Decent Work

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12 September 2013: The International Trades Union Congress has today launched a special website for this year’s October 7 World Day for Decent Work (WDDW). Click here: http://www.wddw.org/

Trade unions and other groups holding events on the day can use the site to download WDDW materials, get updates and upload information about their October 7 plans as well as live updates, photos and videos during the events themselves. Momentum is building for this year’s WDDW, with the ITUC Regional Organisation for the Americas, TUCA, already calling on all its affiliates to mobilise under this year’s theme “Building Workers’ Power”.

Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary, said “The World Day for Decent Work is a day when working people, their unions and their supporters across the world mobilise for decent jobs for all with respect for workers’ rights. We are aiming to exceed last year’s total of 424 events in 74 different countries and press home the demands of working people and their families to governments, employers and the international institutions.”

In the six years after the launch of the World Day for Decent Work, tens of millions of people have taken action on October 7 to stand up for union rights and decent work.

This year again, unions from across the world will be calling in unison for social justice and decent jobs for all. With governments still unwilling or unable to tame the dominance of global finance and multinationals over peoples’ lives, the only way to get the economy back on track and serving the interests of the many rather than the few is by building workers’ power.

Just 7% of working people in the formal and informal sectors are union members, yet hundreds of millions more want the security and protection that unions provide. Organizing new members is the most crucial task facing the union movement worldwide, and the World Day for Decent Work is a great opportunity to spread the union message far and wide, to reach out to others to help them join their union and to support global solidarity actions for working people.

Mass participation in union-organised rallies and demonstrations has been a feature of the World Day for Decent Work in many countries, and the ITUC encourages all organizations to mobilise as many people as possible on the day.

See the ITUC letter to its affiliates