Employmentweb_low

EMployMEnT, worK, and HEalTH inEqualiTiEs - a global perspective
Construction site employing internal
migrant workers from the countryside.
Most workers eat and sleep on site. Beijing
(China).
source: © ilo/M. crozet (2007)
crisis in public health will provide a clear testament to the failure of
“free market” economics in delivering social well-being.
Third, even leaving aside health effects, these changes in
employment conditions will lead to increased social inequality,
including lower wages. as is noted in this book, these changes will
also have important effects on population health. Governments in
rich countries responded to the economic crisis by, amongst other
things, providing massive bail-out packages to large banks and
financial institutions that became enmeshed in, and indebted by,
speculative investment in highly “engineered” but, at best, hard to
value investment products like collateralized debt obligations
(cDos). ordinary taxpayers will foot the bill for these packages long
into the future, especially as large corporations have become so
adept at “massaging” government subsidies and minimising their
own tax exposure through the use of tax havens, promotion of
regressive consumption taxes, transfer pricing and the like, leaving
the tax burden largely with workers. in a further irony, the major
beneficiaries of massive bail-out packages were the very
organisations and advocates of big business who had extolled the
free market and eschewed government intervention (apart from
hidden industry subsidies and wealth transfers from the public
sector, such as those achieved through privatisation). now as
economies “appear” to recover (note the short-lived stock market
recovery in 1931) the same interest groups are vigorously opposing
new regulation or extensions of social protection to the poor. in
essence, the poor who suffered from the excesses of the past
decade are now asked to save those who engineered and benefited
from these excesses, while the underlying causes remain
unaddressed.
fourth, the impact of the global economic recession is likely to
heavily impact migrants and foreign guest-workers, since they are
among the most deprived workers. While there is still limited
empirical evidence, a number of negative effects of the global
economic crisis on migrants and migration have been recently
summarised (international organization for migration [iom], 2009).
firstly, there are restrictions on new admissions of migrant workers
and non-renewal of work permits. secondly, there are massive job
losses in employment sectors sensitive to economic cycles such as
construction and manufacturing, as well as financial services, retail
and travel- and tourism-related services, thus affecting migrants in
these sectors. Thirdly, in some countries there are reports of
reductions in wages or non-payment, fewer working days and
opportunities for overtime available and worse working conditions,
360