Meeting in Sydney, Australia, 8-9 September, the leaders of the 21 member states of APEC - including the US, Russia, Japan, China, Mexico, Malaysia, Peru, Indonesia, the Philippines and the host, Australia - failed to tackle the real challenges of the billions of workers and ordinary people around the Pacific rim.
"Once again, the presidents and prime ministers of the APEC countries have met to discuss their increasing cooperation yet touched upon virtually none of the issues that matter to the people of their countries", said Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
"The region is facing a jobs crisis and economic inequality runs rampant in most of the countries. Low wages, bad conditions and a lack of rights are becoming the face of work in the developed economies in APEC, while underemployment, outright exploitation and toiling in the shadow of the formal economy is the everyday reality of more and more people in APEC's developing economies. But APEC is doing nothing to redress this", emphasized Ryder.
In the next 10 years hundreds of millions of jobs will have to be created in the Asian part of APEC alone, argues the Asian Development Bank among others. While economic growth remains strong in the region, it creates fewer and fewer jobs.
Indeed, some APEC countries have even experienced rising real unemployment in years of record setting growth rates. It is therefore hard to see where the jobs should emerge from unless employment is prioritised in national and international policies.
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