The challenge of creating jobs.

• Position: OAS

MEETING IN THE CAPITAL of Trinidad and Tobago, the hemisphere's highest-level labor officials affirmed that "full and productive employment and decent work are central to sustainable social and economic development," and resolved to address challenges related to labor and employment in the context of globalization.

The Fifteenth Inter-American Conference of Ministers of Labor examined common labor issues and problems that affect all countries in the region regardless of size, said the host country's Minister of Labour and Small and Micro-Enterprises Development, Danny Montano, who chaired the three-day meeting. "We spoke almost as if we were a brotherhood, as if we understood each other's problems," he told a news conference.

Addressing the ministerial meeting's opening session, OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza stressed that creating decent employment for all citizens of the Americas "is really possible, albeit a challenge." The region has sufficient resources for everyone to earn enough to live on, working under conditions that do not put their lives or health at risk, Insulza said; nonetheless, poverty and injustice continue to be serious problems.

"The improvement of living conditions for workers, and the provision of better access to an income, is perhaps the only way to achieve overall development of our societies," the Secretary General said. He noted that the region must create five million jobs every year just to keep the overall unemployment rates at the current level.

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