The fossil fuel sector is among those whose wages should be capped to reduce extreme poverty, argues a UN report presented on October 20, 2023 to the General Assembly. (afp.com/TLYFORDPIKE)
A United Nations report on extreme poverty and human rights calls for a global rise in wages, with the exception of “destructive” sectors such as finance, fossil fuels or tobacco.
A “salary must reflect one’s contribution to society and not just an ability to create profit”, ruled the UN special rapporteur on this issue, Olivier De Schutter, who presented his work on Friday before the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“It is absurd that the jobs that have the most value for others, particularly poor people, such as professions in personal services, education, health, are among the least well paid, while “Others are so generous despite the social and environmental damage they create”, stormed Mr. De Schutter.
“It is time to overturn the injustices” and “put an end to the scandal of wages for the poor”, further pleaded this Belgian lawyer and diplomat.
Mr. De Schutter would like “governments to draw up a list of the most socially useful professions to remunerate them accordingly, while other professions should (see their salaries) be capped to reduce their harmful effects”.
According to him, the most harmful sectors would be finance, fossil fuels, the pesticide, plastics, tobacco and advertising industries.
“Governments are so obsessed with creating jobs that they forget that they must be decent and protect workers from poverty,” lamented Olivier De Schutter in a telephone interview with AFP.
In his July report entitled “The working poor: a human rights-based approach to wages”, Mr De Schutter notes that “more than one in five workers in the world live in poverty”.
In fact, “productivity gains rarely translate into an increase in wages for workers, in particular due to the spread of atypical forms of employment and the erosion of union rights”, leading to the category of “poor workers “.
For the first time in the 21st century, global wages fell in 2022 by an average of 0.9%, failing to keep pace with inflation, while corporate profits increased.
Result: one in five workers on the planet lives in poverty. 55% are in this situation in Africa, 6.3 million in the United States, and 8.5% of workers in the European Union “risk falling into poverty”, according to the UN report.
© 2023 AFP
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