Later this month (September 26-28), in Buenos Aires, the G20 Interfaith Forum will explore the present and future of work. The 2018 agenda of the G20 (which groups the world’s wealthiest economies and their leading partners) is shaped by the year’s host country, Argentina. It focuses this year sharply on questions about labor. Excitement combined with unease about how new technologies are shaping jobs and job markets underlie the agenda. On the surface the topic is framed positively, but underneath lurk some deep concerns: technology and globalization are reshaping the world of work, with upsides but also downsides. The latter include low wages, poor working conditions, job uncertainty, unemployment, underemployment, forced and child labor (including many forms of modern slavery), sweatshops, weak social protections, and threats to a stalwart of work advocacy: trade unions.
A raw and robust reality is that work and social justice are tightly linked. The links can be obscured by the daily challenges involved in jobs and by economic “facts of life.” The call for “decent work” reflects an effort to highlight the many and complicated ethical issues that surround employment, which range from human-to-human interactions to the fairness and equity of the global economic system. Decent work sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives. It puts the notions of human dignity and its intricate links to human rights at the center. The International Labour Organization (ILO) highlights the concept of decent work as one of its core objectives, defining it as “opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men.”
These fundamental ethical issues are now, as they have been for millennia, a central concern of religious institutions and leaders. This is why religious perspectives are central to the G20 Interfaith Forum agenda. Drawing on activists working at the community level, scholars, and policymakers, the forum will explore the lively concerns that arise as new technologies transform and unsettle traditional work expectations. For example, long-standing and new demands on education systems are emerging, which must adapt to prepare and train people for life and work in the twenty-first century. The forum’s goal is to draw on the wisdom and experience (good and bad) of various religious traditions, in dialogue with others who share a deep commitment to ensuring that those who are most vulnerable are included in all thinking about work and society.
Religious perspectives have much to contribute on wide-ranging questions, some more obvious than others. What kinds of innovation are most significant and how do they affect, especially, vulnerable groups? What are the most promising opportunities (for example, to support those now in the informal economy, the disabled, refugees), and where do the risks lie? A special concern is overt and hidden discrimination, an issue catapulted into public debate by harassment that sparked the “#MeToo” movement but applying often in insidious ways to religious groups, with dress a prominent example. Changing labor markets put new demands on businesses, not the least of which are ethical; religious principles and communities are deeply engaged in these issues, whether they involve ethical investment decisions or business practices.
The G20 Interfaith Forum recognizes that the issue of modern slavery emerges as a topic where G20 leaders and religious communities can and should join to demand and drive action. Pope Francis has called this persistent shame “a plague on the body of contemporary humanity” and has convened several meetings to spur action. The Patriarch of Constantinople and the Archbishop of Canterbury met in Istanbul, also to demand action. And a coalition of religious leaders and actors have signed a declaration of commitment to end modern slavery. While ending modern slavery is something on which there seems to be universal agreement—it is clearly set out as an unambiguous global goal in the UN Global Agenda (SDG 8.7)—three years after all UN member states endorsed the goals, implementation has far to go.
The commitment to decent work has deep and vibrant religious roots. It has involved an alliance between the Vatican and the ILO; in November 2017 a group of trade unions met with Pope Francis in Rome. Also, the World Council of Churches has a long history of concern with this topic that included (as a joint effort with the ILO) a handbook on working with religious communities to advance decent work. Religious communities here obviously offer their moral voice and outrage. But there are many other areas where direct action and support are playing critical roles: for example the work of many religious sisters on sex and labor trafficking and efforts to end child and forced marriage.
Caritas en Veritate, the 2009 papal encyclical, focused on imperatives for decent work. It recalls Pope John Paul II’s 2000 appeal for “a global coalition in favour of ‘decent work,’” as a “strong moral impetus to this objective,” an aspiration for families in every country of the world. Decent work, the encyclical affirms,
“means work that expresses the essential dignity of every man and woman in the context of their particular society: work that is freely chosen, effectively associating workers, both men and women, with the development of their community; work that enables the worker to be respected and free from any form of discrimination; work that makes it possible for families to meet their needs and provide schooling for their children, without the children themselves being forced into labour; work that permits the workers to organize themselves freely, and to make their voices heard; work that leaves enough room for rediscovering one's roots at a personal, familial and spiritual level; work that guarantees those who have retired a decent standard of living.”
A noble and practical roadmap for discussion and action.
