Word: laboral
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...financial meltdown has turned into global economic crisis, the human cost in terms of lost jobs and displaced workers is growing at a terrifying pace. The International Labor Organization (ILO) predicts that 38 million people around the world could lose their jobs this year alone, sending unemployment rates in Europe and the U.S. into double digits for the first time in years and slowing - or in some places reversing - the massive jobs growth of recent years in Asia. Alarmed by the social and political consequences, governments, companies and labor unions in countries across the globe are scrambling...
...this gut-wrenching downturn, the Germans and the Japanese are no longer alone. "It's happening a lot," says Raymond Torres, director of the ILO's International Institute for Labor Studies. "People are trading off their jobs for wage cuts and other measures." There's even some anecdotal evidence that it's starting to happen in the U.S., where companies have traditionally not hesitated to lay off staff in a downturn; last month the New York Times announced a 5% pay cut for some of its staff in return for extra vacation days...
Torres and other labor experts say it's an open question whether these schemes make much of a difference. In the short term, they may well slow the rise in unemployment. But if the current crisis continues, as many economists are predicting, at least for this year and probably into 2010, even pay cuts, work-sharing schemes and shorter working hours won't be enough to safeguard jobs. "The real issue is can it be sustained?" Torres asks...
...nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, chief economist Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel argues forcefully that governments should do more to retrain workers and overhaul their labor-market policies to ensure that once recovery comes, new jobs are created in sufficient numbers to swiftly bring the jobless rate back down again. But ask him about the German short-work measures, and he's skeptical. "They can't stop rising unemployment," he says, "they just delay it." Indeed, in its latest economic forecast released March 31, the OECD expects unemployment in Germany to rise from its current...
...particularly strong in China, where the global economic crisis has led to the closure of 7.5% of the country's small and mid-size companies since the end of 2008. In February, the central government's powerful State Council ordered companies throughout the country to notify local government-backed labor unions if they planned to cut either 10% of staff or more than 20 employees. In Beijing, state-owned enterprises have been ordered not to lay off any of their employees this year. The government is also looking to make positive examples of private businesses that keep on staff. That...