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SOLIDAR at the second ITUC World Congress

Last week, the second ITUC World Congress closed its doors in Vancouver. Sharan Burrow, President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, was elected to succeed Guy Ryder, the first General Secretary of the ITUC. During the Congress, an important contribution was made by Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who stressed that defending the right to decent work was a priority for the government during the 2001 crisis in Argentina and called for the regulation of the financial markets.

SOLIDAR President, Josef Weidenholzer, attended a side-event together with representatives of the Decent Work Alliance stressing the value of building alliances to produce progressive policy changes: “we need to act together focusing on where our added value is; we need NGOs to campaign and raise public support; we need dialogue with decision makers; we need unions to negotiate and to advance workers rights”, he said.