tv [untitled] August 29, 2013 5:30am-6:01am EDT
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bailing out ordinary people and trying to curb the blow for them there was quite a lot of action to how big corporations and bailing out big companies who later laid out workers and thousands would you agree with me that demand for this major change has actually been missed and this misery that shocked many people back in two thousand and eight is now essentially treated like a new normal i think people do recognize that the crisis meant that an enormous effort was going to have to be made to get back on our feet again but they want to things one is they want policy is which work ok we make a sacrifice but we want to see a result the reality is so far people have made the sacrifice but up until now they don't feel the results of that the second thing is it's a natural human reflex people want policies which are fair if i make an effort somebody should make an effort and those who have more capacity who are richer
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should make a bigger effort and i think the feeling is that the load is not being shared fairly this is about social justice let me pick up on that you just mentioned social justice obviously we're having this conversation in a country where i'm working class proletariat used to be a commanding force. the labor movement was part of the state ideology obviously that ideology failed for a number of reasons that are beyond the scope of this conversation but such concepts like social justice so it darity social protections i find them to be a bit tainted by the association of the socialist ideas in certain countries like the united states for example you know such concept as social justice is now treated as a bit of a dirty war it may be something and dignified reserved for slackers and moochers rather than active people trying to do something for their society and i understand what you're saying but i have to say my organization. as the objective of social
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justice as its primary obligation it's an organization which is nearly one hundred years old we work for social justice and what i find despite the this sort of connotation that you're right can exist i find that people are talking more and more and more about the need for greater social justice i here in the meeting rooms here in moscow the idea of solidarity countries need to show solidarity to get out of the crisis together so i think you know whatever you know the feelings of the past might be i think these words which belong to the future they don't belong to the past these are notions which are very relevant for the challenges of today but if we are talking about today and present day politics every time president obama for example social welfare he's being accused of being a socialist. let me just mention that american social policy isn't the social safety net that exists there is not exactly. why by the global standards so there
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is this project distorts. concepts of social justice and social protection it depends where in the world you're looking at you know the ilo has a policy we want to social protection floor a minimum for everybody and what's interesting is in many of the emerging and developing countries big progress is being made look at china they are rolling out pension schemes they're rolling out medical care for all of their population it's an enormous endeavor in brazil in mexico they're making big progress toyland the philippines so they're going forward. and at the same time some of the richest countries are turning around and saying well maybe we can't afford this social protection and longer maybe it's something we have to give up to stay competitive we think that's a mistake now you mention china and i have a question on china later on but before we go there let me ask one more question
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about the united states and united states is a very peculiar country when it comes to. labor practices and labor policies because for once this country has never had a very strong labor party of the history of trade unions. while you can argue that they have been historically rather weak and also as i think you alluded to in the united states there's still no consensus on the role of government in providing social security and social justice and yet some of the critics of your organization have said in the posit that the ilo may be too strongly influenced by the united states and the so-called market fundamentalism that the united states often represents how would you respond to such purposes no i don't think that's a reasonable view of the way our organization works or indeed how the united states works in the united states is a major player in the international labor organization and upholds really our
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fundamental values very strongly no the united states has its own challenges it has its own challenges in terms of social security as we've talked about it's got its challenges in respect of employment at the moment and of course keeping people out of poverty but social safety net in the united states is also very limited compared to other countries. structure richer countries poverty levels are where they are so i absolutely agree with that point of course by international comparison social protection level social security in the states can seem surprisingly saying ok these are policy choices that people make. follows its own principles its own objectives and they apply to the united states like they apply to russia or the countries of europe or everywhere else but isn't it the case that in many countries around the world including russia especially after the collapse of the soviet union many leaders have become sort of in thrall to liberal market ideas there was ideas
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. sensually taken for granted and i think it could be argued that this uncritical embrace of the. you know miracle powers of capitalism is ultimately at the at the core of the current crisis but i think that the crisis broke was the result of excesses and failures of policy i would say the excesses particularly the financial sector we sort of financial sector that got out of control that was not properly regulated and that gave rise to the bubble that exploded in two thousand and eight you're absolutely right and i think when you said it earlier on when the crisis burst when lehman brothers collapsed there was a thorough rethink world leaders of all political types was saying we need really to change the direction of the global economy and i think that feeling is with us today it's not been acted upon fully but i think we need to see
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a market economy which is properly regulated where necessary guarantees are provided for working people but necessary safeguards are put in place as well so that we don't simply have a repetition of the excesses that led to the crisis now one of the a longstanding recommendations proposed by york in a zation is to create jobs in order to stimulate growth and i guess this is one of those chicken and that questions what makes you believe that jobs will produce growth rather than vice versa. the two go together you're right it can be seen as a chicken and egg situation but we believe in current circumstances and it's the debate that's taking place among labor ministers everybody agrees that we need jobs and growth so we have to stimulate the world economy we have to get some demond into the world economy and that means getting wages moved up again getting social security payments properly paid but yes we have to work on the supply side we have to work on training people for the right types of jobs we have to get employment
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services working better we have to reexamine unemployment schemes to activate workers to try to get humid night into the resources for all those projects and the problem is of course that those resources are limited here's a funny thing it costs more to do nothing than it does to do something i'll give you an example europe the european union is now talking about a youth guarantee scheme that's to say and in european union today nearly one in four young people under twenty five is out of a job but the idea in europe is look if you're young and you're out of school and you're out of work for four months you get a guaranteed place either at work or in education does that cost money yes it does but it costs a lot more to do nothing it costs a lot more in terms of loss production it costs a lot more in unemployment benefit payments but it's also got an enormous human cost an enormous social cost so we do have to find the money upfront as an
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investment don't treat it as a cost now you just mentioned universal or maybe european schemes and if i think if you followed the said here to its logical and you may end up with this system that we used to have here in the soviet union when every college graduate was guaranteed a job although not necessarily the job he or she wanted obviously that system of planned or. artificially created employment wasn't sustainable in the long run. when you advocate creation of jobs by governments how do you make sure that those jobs facilitate rather than hinder natural economic process is what i see i don't see the government as a universal provider of guaranteed jobs all of the evidence shows that nine out of ten new jobs created come from the private sector the role of the state is to
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facilitate to help to provide the right enabling environment and countries are going to have to arrive at sensible balances between proper welfare which i think is a hall mark of a decent society but also the obligations of the citizen to contribute these are complex political discussions not ones frankly which we could put a simplistic label on as a solution we'll continue discussing obligations as citizens and governments just after a short break. being
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in cuba is not a failure of the cuban people it's a failure of sidel castro to come. to some some nation on sabotage backed by the officials both hostility and suspicion encouraged by the government these operations against cuba were known to the attorney general of the united states the president united states himself the defendant's intelligence arms had to infiltrate to resist. pressure lay jones freedom fighters terrorists. who is who. the real terrorist are you stand up on our cheek.
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welcome back to worlds apart we are discussing the various ways of inducing labor of a guy or either the director general of the international labor organization mr right or you're going to i know is very concerned with rising unemployment and as far as i understand it's a much greater program problem unemployment in general if i'm not mistaken one out of two people young people in countries like greece and spain is out of work you're right unemployment in greece and spain is creeping up for young people up to nearly between fifty and sixty percent but overall in europe warm for young people to work
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in general use unemployment is twice as high as general on employment in the g twenty the twenty countries who are here in moscow at the g. twenty there's only two countries where use unemployment is not twice as high at least that's germany and japan so this is a massive social problem it's a social drama but i think having a larger share of younger people used to be treated as a demographic dividend how did it become such a liability. that it's a major social problem now well you know i do hear countries which have a young population so this is a demographic dividend why because it means they'll be more people of working age to look after the older people this is the dividend this is supposed to do. that's if you can find them jobs and i hear the same people say you know if we don't find them jobs the demographic dividend becomes
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a demographic time bomb and let me just pick up on that in many of the arab uprisings it was a young economically disadvantaged people who are allowed those uprising and i think the reception of those uprisings was initially a very enthusiastic around awhile but now more and more countries are increasingly kind. cerned about what is going to happen in those countries in the long run in the europe to be see the rise of protest movement in this country a russian citizen faction of its labor conditions. very drastic social and political change about. a century ago so as a had of the international labor organisation do you think world leaders actually understand that labor and indeed may be a ticking time bomb as you just said i think political leaders understand very very well that mass youth unemployment is a major political problem and i'm asked perhaps a question that people like you asked me most frequently is when does youth
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unemployment become a source of political instability when is it going to actually lead to change in our society and there is no in numerical terms you know if you'd asked me that question three years ago i would never have imagined that youth unemployment in greece could be approaching sixty percent without a societal breakdown you know the situation in greece is desperate speed very clear but there hasn't been a revolution there hasn't been a political breakdown there's still an elected government hasn't happened and by the way the important thing is we should not wait politicians should not wait until you see an employment becomes a threat to society the real tragedy of youth unemployment is that there are seventy five million young people in the world today who are out of a job and have no future it's a massive human waste it's a human drama it's a human tragedy you know i covered the arab uprisings extensively and i think many
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western democracy is a very skeptical if not dismissive of other forms of government even if those governments are capable of providing that social stability people and i want to pose it to you as an academic or a scientific question are there any study. that would prove the link between democratic elections democratically elected government and. good labor practices or high employment i think history shows us that in the end democracy transparent government which has to be accountable to the people is the most effective economic system that there is there's no doubt about that i think democracy is where governments have to answer to the people where enterprises have to be held accountable there are always failings this is what works that's the history of the law you just have to say they could be no doubt and i think there's no doubt that well i think you can. statement let me give you one example
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china and the organization just recently complimented china for raising minimum wages to address working inequality you mentioned the pension schemes and the chinese system is generally not considered a democratic system it is highly exploitive of its people even though china over the last couple of days gets lifted more people out of poverty than any other country moreover if we take africa for example china is the main contributor to creating jobs in africa and in doing that through some of these schemes that you proposed big infrastructure projects so. trying to understand the point that you make it's one country in a very big country the biggest in the world nevertheless in addition to china's remarkable economic performance which is increasingly increasingly converting into social progress through social protection systems through the policies of raising
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minimum wages china is advancing socially as well china is also opening up big time also in its own way of operating its own society its political system is evolving the question is a fair one but nevertheless i don't think the example of. is a contradiction to the general proposition that the best forms are by the way we have to look at people's rights democracy as are values based values based. meaning as well as people's rights are observed not only in democratic societies i know that for many people in the west this is a scandalous idea but i think even during communist times in this country there were times when people's rights were observed maybe not fully but workers' rights were respected and people enjoyed some sort of social stability and social protection my point is not against democracy but my point is i feel that in many countries around the world and our countries would be one example syria libya would
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be. spain when i was young i went to live in spain two years three years after franco the fascist regime was overthrown and it was true those high unemployment franco's spain very few people said we want franco but we want fascism back but i think it's a very it's a full because when you argue for example about the war in iraq people always say so you would want saddam hussein back absolutely not he was a dictator but when we talk about the country like libya for example good alfie wasn't an ideal ruler but during his time people enjoyed high level off employment social protections that libyans these days could only dream of and i think that in the west there is a bias against these social protections that exist people believe that democracy should come at all cost even if that means sacrificing you know the way of life if you have at the moment social that humans even the. last democratic government has
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been able to produce trust people with their rights people can make their own decisions when they're given the freedom to and i agree with you to go disruption the removal of it to pay to ship these courses disruption and causes economic dislocation. and i think you mentioned the arab spring i think people welcomed the arab spring certainly our people did but of course it gives rise to economic dislocation the problem is all the people are having second thoughts and may difficult or it's difficult but in the end you have to rely on the right of people to make their own decisions. or to that principle and i think that was a really really was well i guess my question is about maybe. putting higher stress and higher and francis on the social cohesion and the possibility of social evolution rather than revolutions that seem to be here so trendy around it well i
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don't think you need to present it as one or the other you know i think everybody attaches importance to social rights to social cohesion but that's not an antithesis of democracy rather the opposite i think but listen when change comes and change comes in a broad way you certainly get some difficult questions to do with the new sort in russia with the fall of the soviet union of course the ninety's were the toughest years one could imagine life expectancy fell in this country it's going back up again you know this is going on a year is a very high toll on the society i don't doubt that. we already discussed the chinese model and i would like to move to european way of dealing with this crisis which i think is sometimes the exact opposite of the chinese model which is this territory and trying to sort of save your way out of the crisis even though in europe as far as i understand there is still no consensus on whether it works or
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not from the labor a point of view or what kind of impact to measures have had on the. population so far but i think you're right to point to the controller see around austerity policies because you know the crisis is turn from a fine. crisis two thousand and eight two thousand and nine into a sovereign debt crisis in europe around two thousand and ten when the financial markets started to react we got this setting in of austerity policies with people saying the number one priority has to be to bring down government deficit and government debt and that's comes first and frankly the experience of the last three years from two thousand and ten to two thousand and thirteen look at the figures. unemployment has grown in that period. growth has not taken off we see the eurozone still stagnating or in recession so in those terms we have bad
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outcomes but in addition and i think this is even more telling. we have no improvement in the deficit or the debt situations and in the end you have to grow to get out of debt you know if i'm unemployed i can't pay my electricity bill if countries aren't working they can't pay their debts so it's a downward spiral in austerity which i think we need to reconsider now those people who cannot pay their bills and spain and greece and some other southern european countries are now margrave being in large numbers to the north so much so that in the united kingdom male migrants now have higher levels of employment than the born men and i guess it's a two sided question because on one hand you can argue that migration is beneficial for the british economy for example i think it gives that seven billion pound burst annually but on the other hand it creates a lot of social and ethnic friction i guess this is just one of the dilemmas of
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global market and i wonder how would you reconcile those issues you know on british and i lived i saw the effects of quite large scale migration into britain after the enlargement of the european union many polish dystonia in people came and they don't work very well but of course that's in a period of growth when we get recession things get a little bit tougher. by the way i just spoke to the spanish minister about migration from spain very interestingly many spaniards would look now to go to latin america not the traditional places it's going to ecuador chile brazil very interesting patterns. now the point i want to make there are two points migration is a natural and in many ways a very positive phenomenon for the global economy so long. this is taken freely undertaken freely as an alternative if. it becomes
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a problem the second thing is we need to make sure that migration is undertaken legally and in conditions which respects the rights of the workers i think one of the big failings of the international community rules in place for trade we put rules in place for capital flows for service flows we've not been very good at putting fair rules into place for the movement of people i would just say that i think there is a third dimension to the problem that you just mentioned that i think it's a social dimension because work used to be something that tied people to diet communities that put down roots and now we have whole countries where a significant proportion of working age population. and the significant time abroad . home remittances they don't see their children grow up they're no longer engaged within that community is they don't vote do you think it's just. a feature of time or something that we will have to get used to. i think migration will always be with us i repeat where migration is undertaken because you have no other
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alternative for a decent life and that is why i think the major approach needs to be to create or help to create jobs in the countries where people all take the jobs to the people not just the people to the jobs and unfortunately we do see countries we do see countries where the brightest the most skilled people simply leave because there is no future for them in their own country this is not the. conversation this is all we have time for please join us again same place same time here on the part.
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but he hears things that most people never do think call him disabled but he's the world's first deaf and blind doctor of science. professor at xander savor of. the great life lived against the odds. right to see. first street. and i think the church. on our reporters would. be in the. house it. was.
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president obama says action against syria over its alleged use of chemical weapons would be a warning shot not a large scale attack that's as washington sees support for a potential intervention weekend with britain's parliament divided on the issue. and critics point to america's own toxic past from agent orange in viet nam to cia support for saddam's chemical aggression coming up in the shifting sands of u.s. foreign policy. and. a victim of child abuse in england speaks out as sex offenders are taken off a police watch list aimed at safeguarding communities from predators.
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