Three-Day G8 Social Summit Kicks Off in Rome
29/03/2009
The Italian Presidency will be proposing a global welfare pact based on social sustainability as a crucial factor in economic stability on both the national and worldwide scale at a meeting of G8 Labour Ministers in Rome, Welfare Minister Maurizio Sacconi announced in an article in Corriere della Sera, later reiterating his call at the news conference held to mark the start of the G8 meeting devoted to labour.
The Labour Ministers' Meeting, which will wind up on 31 March, kicks off today with talks with the international labour and business organisations. After an initial session devoted to labour in the group's eight member countries, the meeting will be expanded to include China, India, Brazil, Egypt, South Africa and Mexico.
Minister Sacconi stressed that the present crisis has been triggered largely by a crisis in confidence in the future. Thus it is crucial to rebuild the confidence circuit, starting with safeguards for welfare and for people. In addition to measures designed to safeguard savings and the stability of the financial system, it is also going to be necessary to adopt timely, targeted measures to protect people's income so as to safeguard the manufacturing base and employment, which in turn will also make it possible to address the issue of worker training.
Thus the primary goal of the welfare pact which the Italian Presidency is planning to propose will be to support people hard hit by the crisis, not only by devising special kinds of income supplement but also by ensuring the survival of jobs and by investing effectively in training. Alongside temporary measures designed to reassure national communities in the immediate term, a fully-fledged political and ethical project is going to be required for after the crisis is over: a project capable of reconstructing the human face of capitalism. This, because in the phase that is going to ensue once the crisis is past, a crucial role will be played by the human capital that each country has proven capable of safeguarding and boosting.
