Too many of our friends are without jobs or with insecure jobs that are without paid sick leave and often unsafe.
Some of our jobs are changing or disappearing, and there is a growing sense of unease about what will happen in the future as the Covid-19 pandemic spreads around the world. Corporations have been pulling the strings of government and loosening the strings of the public purse in their own interest for far too long. There are companies that are taking responsibility in this crisis, but there are also corporate predators that see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gouge the public and come out the other side of the pandemic as entrenched monopolies.
It is working people who are bearing the brunt of the crisis – those on the front line and those pushed out of work.
It will take all of us to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. We need a new social contract between workers, governments and companies so that we can agree on vital measures through social dialogue, where health and care are guaranteed for all, where the majority of the world’s people who don’t have social protection will finally get it, and where economic stimulus gets to the workers who need it and their families.
The social contract was broken. But together we can build resilient economies and write a new one.