Workers will pay the costs of global crisis

International union leaders warned representatives of governments and employers, and World Bank President Robert Zoellick, that the burden of the current financial turmoil will fall on the world's workers. The net result of the current global financial crisis, caused by the bursting of the subprime mortgage market bubble in the United States, is that workers will lose their jobs, as in the past, a labor representative predicted. Roy Trotman, of Barbados, chair of the Workers' Group within the International Labor Organization (ILO) Governing Body, said that "the working poor will sink further into the margins of society" as a result of the financial turbulence. Another consequence, according to Trotman, is that "we will endanger the modest progress being made towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals," the eight objectives established by the United Nations, which include halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and experiencing hunger in the world by 2015, from 1990 levels. Workers and their families will not be able to afford to meet their basic needs, Trotman said at a debate about the repercussions of the global financial crisis, held on Mar. 17 by the tripartite Governing Body of the ILO, made up of workers', employers' and government representatives. The discussion was based on a study prepared by the ILO in February, which describes how financial irregularities in the United States overwhelmed the housing market, with serious negative effects on employment, retail sales and other indicators. The report, on "Current prospects and policies for decent work: The challenge of multilateral cooperation and policy coherence for a fair globalization," says that "the depth and length of a US slowdown or recession is uncertain, as is its spread to other countries." The ILO report describes financial markets as the most integrated part of the global economy. For this reason, credit restrictions in the US and other industrial countries will have repercussions on companies and jobs all over the world. The credit crunch also affects investment and consumption. Consequently, it is bound to affect production in rich countries and, through trade links, in developing countries, it says.