Porto, Portugal, 2011. Where will the jobs come from?
GENEVA / ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Credit Suisse Tuesday 1 November confirmed weekend rumours that it is cutting jobs, saying it will reduce its global staff head count by 3 percent (some 1,500 jobs), while Kudelski in Lausanne announced it will cut 270 jobs, most of them in Switzerland.
The ILO (International Labour Organization) in Geneva, in the runup to the G20 meeting in XX, says that 80 million jobs need to be created worldwide to return to pre-crisis levels, but it is likely that only half this number will be created.
“The new World of Work Report 2011: Making markets work for jobs says a stalled global economic recovery has begun to dramatically affect labour markets,” the ILO says in a statement issued Monday 31 October. “On current trends, it will take at least five years to return employment in advanced economies to pre-crisis levels, one year later than projected in last year’s report.”
See: ILO interactive statistical world map, unemployment
Swiss bank’s latest redundancies: now 7% of workforce leaving
Credit Suisse announced Tuesday 1 November that it is looking for new cost savings of CHF0.8 billion by the end of 2013, in addition to savings of CHF2 billion announced earlier.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The ILO’s (International Labour Organization) adoption of a set of international standards to improve the conditions of domestic workers has had an initial negative impact on Indonesian women. Jakarta announced last week that it would not allow its citizens to travel to Saudi Arabia unless human rights conditions there improved. An Indonesian maid was beheaded in Saudi Arabia in June.
Saturday July 2 Saudi Arabia announced that it will not allow Indonesian women to work as maids, stranding thousands of workers, most of whom come from poor families in Indonesia, and stalling talks between the two governments.
Switzerland and Geneva hosted numerous international meetings and dignitaries this week
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – “International Geneva”, as the city likes to profile itself when talking about the UN and other international organizations, has had a more than usually busy week.
Highlights:
Wednesday 15 June: The UN Human Rights Commission looked at allegations of human rights abuses in Cote d’Ivoire and the current situation there, with a large number of countries speaking. Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that in the six months since the UN set up a hotline for human rights abuses in December more than 12,000 calls have been received. UNHRC unofficial report with speakers’ summaries. The UNHRC also passed a statement calling on Syria to give the UN high commissioner access to the country.
Thursday 16 June: The International Labour Organization at its centenary annual Conference, adopted a set of international standards to improve “the working conditions of tens of millions of domestic workers worldwide”. The standards have been two years in the making and, for the first time, take ILO standards into the informal economy. Text of the new Convention
The two week conference has seen a stream of dignitaries and has included presentations by Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The UNHRC adopted a new set of guiding principles on business and human rights drawn up by Professor John Ruggie of Harvard. It covers state but also corporate responsibilities and gives guidelines for meeting them in several areas including the rights of indigenous peoples, women, national or ethnic groups, religious and linguistic minorities, children, persons with disabilities, and migrant workers and their families as well as business adherence to international law in situations of armed conflict.
Friday 17 June: the UN staff magazine, UN Special, carries a new feature on the nine-storey multi-coloured glass front building on the Rue de France that will be completed in November.
At the end of last week the World Trade Organization noted that it had submitted to the G20 an inter-agency report by 10 UN agencies on managing food prices, to the G20, at its request, “Options for G20 consideration on how to better mitigate and manage the risks associated with the price volatility of food and other agriculture commodities, without distorting market behaviour, ultimately to protect the most vulnerable”.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The annual ILO (International Labour Organization) opens Wednesay 1 June in Geneva and it is sparking more than usual interest, in part because it is the 100th such session for one of Geneva’s oldest international organizations and partly because it is bringing to town Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Two items that are high on the agenda are approval of recommendations and eventually an international convention on domestic workers, and the employment problems of large numbers of displaced persons who have recently fled fighting in Middle Eastern countries. Also on the agenda and likely to garner public attention: the situation of workers in the occupied territories and a new report on hazardous child labour.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A Nigerian family is working out an arrangement with the landlord after being evicted by Geneva police Monday when they failed to pay their rent after several months of warnings, city police confirm.
The mother works at the International Labour Organization and is one of several Nigerians in Geneva who are reportedly owed several months of back pay by their government.
Patrick Pulh, police spokesperson, told GenevaLunch that the mother does not have diplomatic status and the family therefore was treated like any other that doesn’t pay its rent. Geneva saw 1,125 evictions in 2010, says Pulh, down from the 1,540 in 2009.
The family is believed to be working out an agreement with the landlord, but it remains unclear what the Nigerian government’s plans are in terms of settling backpay for its employees who work in international organizations.
The Nigerian Tribune reports that the country’s minister for labour, in Geneva for a meeting at the ILO in March, was briefed on the back payment problem but salaries have remained unpaid.
More foreigners with C permits, border workers
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s quarterly unemployment figures can now be compared to other countries’, using ILO (International Labour Organization) methodology for calculating the numbers. Bern’s new numbers show that the active, working population in the country increased by 1.6 percent during the first half of the year, compared to Q1 and Q2 2009. Unemployment fell from 3.5 to 3.2 percent for Swiss workers and from 10.6 to 7.6 percent for foreigners.
The government attributes the rise in the number of employed to the economic recovery but cautions that the figures also reflect seasonal changes and it will take several quarters using the new calculations to make reliable seasonal adjustments.
By comparison, the European Union and the euro zone active working population fell by 0.6 percent during the first half of 2010.
New unemployment definition
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Some 500 ILO (International Labour Organization) employees in Geneva, more than half the total, blocked a meeting of their executive council Wednesday 10 November when they formed a human chain outside the meeting room where the group was scheduled to meet.
The staff of the UN organization are threatening to strike next week if their demands are not met. Two of the issues, the group says, are that the governing board does not respect recruitment practices and the ILO has too many short-term contracts, with little job security.
If the vote next Tuesday is in favour of a strike, it will be the first in the organization’s history.
Burma trade unionists - Photo ITUC
[Video] Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The number of trade unionists murdered in 2009 increased a staggering 30 percent, to 101, worldwide.
According to the International Confederation of Trade Unions (ITUC)’s report, Latin America has become the deadliest region in the world for trade union rights. The report was issued to coincide with the International Labor Organization (ILO) conference taking place in Geneva.
Of the 101 murdered, 48 – including five women – were killed in Colombia, making it the deadliest place in the world for union leaders. Another 40 union workers were killed in Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Brazil and the Dominican Republic.
Francis Blanchard, former ILO director-general
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Francis Blanchard, a French citizen who was director-general of the ILO (International Labour Office) from 1974 to 1989, died Wednesday 9 December 2009, at the age of 93.
He joined the ILO in 1951, where his first assignment was as deputy chief of the manpower division. He was appointed deputy director-general in 1968 with responsibility for technical cooperation and regional activities.
Not enough of this around, says ILO
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Unemployement levels in G-20 countries would be between 29 and 43 percent higher without the economic stimulus packages put in place by most governments following the economic crisis unleashed by the fall of investment bank Lehman Brothers one year ago, the International Labour Organization (ILO) announced today 21 September. The ILO still foresees the number of unemployed globally at between 219 and 241 million people, an increase of between 39 and 61 million unemployed.
Da Silva, Sarkozy address jobs crisis summit in Geneva
Nicolas Sarkozy (©2009 ILO)
Lula da Silva (©2009 ILO)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Brazil’s President Lula da Silva Monday spoke out against international tax shelters and the deficiencies of a capitalist system that provoked the world economic crisis. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France called for an increased role for the ILO at the international level, on a par with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank.
The two are among the heads of state participating in a three-day jobs crisis summit in Geneva that opened Monday 15 June.
The summit is part of the International Labour Organization‘s (ILO) annual labour conference, from 3-19 June, and looks to examine ways in which government policies address the labour situation in the economic downturn.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Juan Somavia, director general of the International Labour Organization (ILO) was re-elected for a third term with 43 votes in his favour and 13 abstentions, in a secret ballot.
There were no other candidates.
