UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : UN Press conference - Covid-19, Policy Brief on World of Work 18 June 2020

Good afternoon everybody.

Let's just wait a couple of more minutes to give the opportunity to more colleagues to connect.

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OK, maybe we can start with this briefing on the policy brief of the Secretary General of the United Nations on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the world of work.

As you know well, our correspondents, we have been issuing a series of policy briefs of the Secretary General since the beginning of the pandemic on a number of sectors impacted by the pandemic.

And this one is, as I said, on the employment, the woodwork.

To discuss this brief and to have this brief presented to us today, we have the great pleasure to have Miss Deborah Greenfield, who is the Deputy Director General for Policy at the International Labour Organisation.

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And we also have Mr Sangen Lee who's the Director of the ILO Employment Department and one of the main author of this document.

So I will give them now the floor for to Deborah for introductory remarks.

Sangen will also be available to answer your questions.

Just after the impriminary remarks, we will go to questions and I would just like to remind you that this briefing is not, it's not a background briefing.

You can use an attribute what you will hear today.

However, the content of the briefing, everything related to the brief, to the policy brief is embargoed until 12 O 1:00 AM New York time, 6:00 AM Geneva time on Friday, 19th of June.

And with this, I will give the floor now to Deborah for her introductory remarks.

Deborah, you have the floor.

Thank you very much, Alessandra.

I'm delighted to be here today to launch the Secretary General's policy brief on the Impacts of COVID-19 on the world of work.

Now we all know that the pandemic has had and continues to have dramatic, even devastating effects on labour and employment, on on the jobs and livelihoods and well-being of workers and their families, as well as on businesses, particularly micro and small and medium enterprises around the globe.

Vulnerable groups, and I would include their workers in the informal economy, migrants and refugees, young people, indigenous peoples, are particularly affected, as are women.

Young people, and particularly young women, are facing a disproportionate burden that is likely to affect their labour market outcomes and prospects in the long term, both in terms of the wages that they will earn and the skills that they will be able to acquire throughout their working lives.

We face now the prospects of what the ILO is calling a lockdown generation.

Now, one might say that the virus is an equal opportunity disease.

On the other hand, the way we look at it is that developing and fragile economies, those that entered the pandemic with tremendous challenges to begin with, will be the least able to cope because they were already grappling with decent work deficits, with a lack of rights for workers, with insufficient or non existent social protection, with no social dialogue institutions and persistent inequalities and pervasive informality.

So if you take away anything from this policy brief, it's that a reset to the status quo ante is not an option.

What we need to do instead is to accelerate recovery and the transition to a much more inclusive, sustainable and resilient world.

And that includes A3 phased response.

First, in the short term, we need to provide immediate support to at risk workers, enterprises, jobs as well as incomes so that we can avoid business closures and massive layoffs and unemployment.

And these interventions should be built as much as possible on existing structures while steering activity towards sustainable green development.

In the medium term, we need to encourage a restart in a structured way of our economies and a return to work that doesn't compromise the health of workers and that doesn't take pressure off our efforts to slow down and eradicate the pandemic.

There is a false dichotomy between protecting health and keeping enterprises closed.

But we need to do this in a smart way.

Third, in the longer term, we need to create decent and productive jobs that support a green, inclusive and resilient recovery.

And we need to move to a better future of work that has to include fundamentally much more investment in social protection, as well as in formalising the informal economy, in climate change mitigation and green jobs and in the care economy.

We also need to reduce the digital divide which has been emphasised so much during the pandemic.

We have to make sure that new technologies are applied to support a human centred development.

In short, we need to use, at least in the short term, the fiscal stimulus that so many countries are applying to shift towards policies that are human centred, inclusive and balance socio economic requirements with the needs of a sustained and sustainable ecosystem.

Now let me give you a few facts about workers, enterprises and employment.

By mid-May, as we say in the brief, 94% of the world's workers were living in countries with some type of workplace closure measures.

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That is what we have predicted consistently is that compared to the baseline of the last quarter of 2019, which is the the last quarter before the pandemic, we now see an equivalent of 305,000,000 lost full time jobs based on a 48 hour work week, 305,000,000 full time jobs lost compared to the baseline.

38% of the global workforce, that's 1.25 billion workers are employed in sectors defined as **** risk food and accommodation, retail and wholesale and wholesale, business and administration and manufacturing.

Almost one in five young people has stopped working since the pandemic began and those who remain employed have seen their working hours cut by 23%.

The situation is worse for young women.

Other groups are also affected profoundly by the crisis.

Informal economy workers, who very often lack rights at work and any form of social protection, suffered a 60% drop in earnings globally in the first month of the crisis alone.

Women are disproportionately employed in the worst affected sectors such as the services sector, hospitality, tourism and care work.

In fact, 60 to 70% of care work workers are women.

Even before the pandemic, these sectors were associated with informal employment, low pay and poor working conditions, and the pandemic has increased the burden of domestic and unpaid care work on many women, which constrains their ability to access employment and creates additional physical and mental stress.

Refugees and migrant workers tend to be in temporary, informal or unprotected work in crowded conditions where physical distancing is not possible.

Often they are their jobs are associated with low pay and poor social protection.

And we know that persons with disabilities, indigenous people and ethnic groups, internally displaced, displaced populations, smallholder farmers and many more have become more vulnerable as a result of this crisis.

436 million enterprises globally are in the **** risk sectors that I mentioned.

And these sectors most at risk are all highly labour intensive.

So food and accommodation has 144 million workers, retail and wholesale 482,000,000, business services and administration 157 million and manufacturing has 463,000,000.

So you see the the integral connection between the ****** to enterprises and the ****** to so many millions of workers, in fact billions of workers around the world.

Agriculture is expected to be badly affected, although with a time lag, because many workers in the agricultural sector are already poor, they lack social protection and they're in informal work.

Those supply chains will deteriorate over time.

Micro and small and medium enterprises are the backbone of the global economy, but so many of these Msmes don't have the resilience or the resources to cope with and recover from the pandemic.

And many may never recover, which of course will create a second wave of unemployment.

But we can shape the way we go forward, and the brief points to many ways in which we can do that.

Our policies need to build on existing agreed normative frameworks.

That includes the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement on climate Change, the ILO 2019 Centenary Declaration on the Future of Work, as well as on relevant international labour standards.

Another point that the brief emphasises, and that can't be emphasised enough, is the need to engage in social dialogue to get the broad support that we need for these fundamental changes.

Social dialogue in times of crisis has more than proven its worth and its value in developing consensus based, broad based and enduring solutions.

Social dialogue encourages the kind of innovation and the kind of creative solutions that we need now to both respond and recover better.

Building a future of work also means, as I've just said, building new approaches.

We need to use fiscal stimulus to shift towards human centred policies that are inclusive, that balance socio economic requirements with the needs of a sustainable ecosystem and that direct investments towards skills towards infrastructure and technology that work for people and also to the to the care and green economies.

With the right kind of action, sequenced properly and done in an urgent but also thoughtful and consensus based way based around the three phased approach that we outlined in the policy brief, we can emerge from the crisis into a more resilient, equitable and sustainable future.

But the policy choices are all up to us.

So thank you very much.

My colleagues, Sangan Lee and I are happy to take questions.

Thank you very much, Deborah, for this introductory remarks.

I will now go to the journalist and ask them if they have question.

There is a first question from Bianca.

Bianca, maybe our speakers don't know you, so you would like to introduce yourself, please.

Hi, Alessandra, can you hear me very well?

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I'm correspondent in Switzerland for Global and Global news.

Global is the largest TV network in Brazil.

And my question is, of course about Brazil.

Do you have figures about Brazil?

How do you see the situation there?

How concerned are you?

You have already mentioned some measures, but this specifically about Brazil.

What must be done to protect workers and to avoid more damage?

Deborah or Sangyun, who would like to take the question.

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What we're seeing about this pandemic is in fact that it occurs in a phased approach.

That is we might think in Europe that we are, we can sort of breathe a sigh of relief as we start to as we start to open up both our economies and our borders.

But we know very well that in, in Latin America, in the Caribbean, in, in, in the African region, this is not the case.

The pandemic occurs in waves and those regions are still experiencing the worst of the pandemic.

We have outlined in in the policy brief many recommendations both for an immediate, an immediate recovery and and a long term recovery.

We work very closely with our constituents in in those countries, not just Brazil, but throughout, throughout the the region.

And so as far as the labour market implications, the recommendations in the policy brief hold for for all countries.

On the on the health side, I think that's not what we were emphasising in the brief.

Of course, Occupational Safety and health measures for essential workers and for opening up which are labour and employment matters are important wherever whether that's Brazil or Switzerland.

Maybe Sanger, you would like to complete with some more information.

Yeah, the thank you very much for your questions about this.

The estimate for browser, we are now in the process of the updating our estimate.

And so I don't think we're in a position to give you actually very specific number at this point.

All I can tell you is that the the for example two months ago the overall situation in browser seems to be either close to the global average or even better than the average.

And since then situation has been has been worsening quite a rapidly.

So for example, we, the global letter, the, the estimate about the working out losses about the 10.7% and Brazil used to be very close to that figure.

But I think we, our, as I said, we are still working on that.

But we, I, we, I think the, at the moment, we think the, the situation for Brazil will be be worse than the, the global average of the 10.7%.

This is because the working out losses or labour market disruption very much depend on many different things, particularly including techniques.

1 is the, the stringency of the lockdown measures and also the direction of the, the measures.

And let's say at the same time how effective governments response to this pandemic or tackling the spread of the pandemic.

These are two very important factors if you you consider digital factors, we don't think at this stage, I mean the situation or our estimate on the Brazil would have been improved anytime soon.

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Thank you very much.

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I'll turn again to the journalist and I see a request for the floor by Kelsey.

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Oh, you're in Geneva.

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This is finished daily.

Just about the measures, I would like to ask, what do the panellists think about the European Union measures against the COVID-19 impact?

Is the package of 750 billion euros?

Is it enough?

Is it, is it good in, in it's strategic impact, Deborah or Sangan?

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Yes, now you're unmuted.

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I think one, one thing has been very clear as we've, as we've looked at the pandemic and, and, and we've seen the trajectory of the pandemic and the massive amounts, the trillions, I think it's 9 1/2 trillion dollars in, in, in stimulus and other measures that have been applied to the pandemic.

It's, it's so encouraging to see this amount.

And as the secretary general has said, 10% of GDP seems to be a ballpark figure.

Of course, we're not through the, in, in some, you know, in Europe, we're not through the effects and the impacts of the pandemic.

And so one would anticipate more measures.

What we what we have found is that, you know, there there is evidence that that that countries and and many of them are in the European Union that have preserved the employment relationship through short, short time work and other measures have a a bit of a leg up on on recovery without.

Because what if you don't break the employment relationship, then it's much easier for enterprises to to open up faster with a trained workforce.

One of the things that we've so so we do see some very positive labour and employment measures that have been taken in in a number of European countries.

When we look at youth and we look at the experience of youth, one of the things that we point to is that because the immediate impact of not being able to find a job for a young person who is looking for a first job, whether out of university or out of technical training or whatever, that that first experience is key.

And lack of success, really lack of success at that moment produces lasting scarring effects.

One of the things we point to from the Great Recession is the E US response with the youth guarantee, which provided a certain number of months of training and or a job for youth who were impacted so heavily after the Great Recession.

And, and we have been pointing to some version of a youth guarantee as a model coming out of the EU that really holds a lot of promise.

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Just want to add the one actually Deborah already said.

As Deborah said, we it's very encouraging to see the European Union's after taking action together and the the at this moment it's crucial to prevent this actually the economic and like a shock into some kind of something structure.

As I did the Deborah mentioned some youth unemployment once you have a higher level of youth improvement that actually have a bit of scaring effect.

So the youth unemployment will be structure issue rather than cyclical issues.

So I'm taking the actions with the all the resources together, but that's a good way, way forward.

Is this sufficient?

We don't know actually.

So it really depends on the how much the Denmark disruption really there and how much it will continue and more importantly, how effective the government's really in Europe in the tackling the, the spread of the pandemic.

The one of the lesson we learned from the Asian countries, for example, the Korea and China, and also very recently from New Zealand, the situation is very volatile.

I mean, very small.

The break out of the, the, the COVID-19 cases have a very strong effect on the labour market and economic activities.

So the sufficiency of this measure will be pretty much depend on the how effective the government will be of war in tackling the, the spread of the pandemic.

Thank you very much.

Is there any other journalist who would like to ask a question?

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I don't see any other hands up.

So if this is the case, I would like to turn again to Deborah and Sangeon.

Would you like to say anything to conclude?

Thank you, Alessandro.

I think at this point I don't have any concluding remarks.

I think the remarks that I made at the at the beginning layout, the important points that the policy brief makes.

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Thank you very much, Deborah.

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I would like to thank you all for having been with us this afternoon.

Deborah Greenfield Sangion Lee to present this policy brief of the Secretary General.

Again, I remind you that everything, including this briefing is embargoed until 12:01 AM New York time tomorrow morning and 6:00 AM Geneva time also tomorrow.

And just to conclude with the words of the Oh, I'm sorry, I see a hand up.

Bianca, you wanted to have a follow up.

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In fact, Alice and I'm.

Oh, yes, because I would need the video of this press briefing.

When could you send it?

Is it going to be today or only tomorrow?

We can send you the, the video today because as I said, this is not a big ground briefing.

It's a, it's a, it's a only embargoed briefing.

We can send it to you under the same conditions, which is that of course, the embargo is also valid for the briefing itself.

So our colleagues from UNTV will be able to, to send it as usual with the usual way as, and, and we ask you to, to respect the embargo also on the briefing.

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Thank you very much to you.

Also, let me conclude with the, the, the words of the Secretary General in his video message that you have received, whose texts you've been receiving, and also the link.

That's, as Deborah said, with smart and timely action at all levels and the Agenda 2030 as our guide, we can emerge from this crisis stronger, with better jobs and a brighter, more equal and greener future for all.

Thank you to you all and have a a very nice afternoon.

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