A decent job for all ” “

“Three billion human beings in our world live on less than two dollars per day, of whom one billion, i.e. 23% of the world population, survive on just one dollar”: the fact was reported by Juan Somavia, director general of the International Labour Office, to the “Second European round table on poverty and social exclusion: the role of the family in the promotion of social inclusion”, held in Italy in recent days and sponsored by the current Italian Presidency of the EU. Poverty in Europe. “In Spain men earn on average 34% more than women”, stresses Arrigo Zanella, from Belgium, general secretary of Retis, a European network whose members include some forty Regions and metropolitan cities in almost all member states (excluding Luxembourg and Holland). Founded a year ago, the network’s objective is the promotion of the campaign against poverty. Zanella continues: “In Belgium some 15% of the population is poor, and the percentage rises to 20 with individuals at risk. But it’s not so much a question of poverty as of the redistribution of wealth and of inequality, first of all the inequality between men and women”. In Italy, according to the data supplied by the Ministry of Welfare, the number of poor families was reduced from 12% in 2001 to 11% in 2002. Those with jobs in Europe rose from 156 million in 1996 to 168 million in 2001, with a rate of increase of approximately 1.5% per year. The increase was lower in 2001: 1.2%. Two years ago those with jobs represented 64% of the population aged between 15 and 64. In Europe there are 66 million people living in a state of relative poverty”. This is a situation to which Retis is seeking responses. “One of the models of social policy we intend to pursue”, explains Zanella, “is that of the Region of Brussels where legislation and measures to combat poverty are discussed with all the social agencies that deal with poverty”, including the associations for the poor, which benefit from state funding. Anticipating situations, instead of having to handle emergencies, is one of the objectives of Retis. “We must work on long-term projects, anticipating the way situations develop”, says Zanella. He recalls, in this regard, two projects of the network: creating a European watchdog on rights to housing, employment and a decent life, and promoting structures for dialogue and cooperation between those who work in the social welfare and healthcare sectors”. Unemployment in the world. “Registered unemployment in the world affects 180 million people and continues to grow”: the point is stressed by Juan Somavia. But he explains that this figures conceals the problem of “under-employment and of the hundreds of millions of people who have no chance of exploiting their creativity”. It also fails to take into account the fact that in the “next ten years over one billion young people, now aged between 5 and 15, will enter the working population”. Employment and the promotion of job-creating enterprises “remain the most effective means of eliminating poverty”. Somavia also stresses the need for “decent work that is not precarious, underpaid, humiliating or of low quality” to be included in global employment policies. The disparity in income between rich and poor is increasingly widening. “In the mid-1990s – points out Somavia – in twenty industrialized countries (also in Europe), over 10% of the population lived below the poverty threshold, with an income below the average monthly income. Women and girls are the most exposed to the poverty trap. In the developing countries two-thirds of female employment is in the informal economy, and women fill the most poorly paid jobs”.