Real progress on climate change will require collective action by governments worldwide, with the support and involvement of a whole range of social institutions, including trade unions.
“The work done by unions and the International Labour Organisation on green jobs is fundamentally important,” said Fred Van Leeuwen, EI General Secretary. He was addressing teacher union leaders from all of the countries of the OECD, who met in Åre, Sweden, 2-4 December 2008.
The environmental crisis and the global financial crisis both demand bold and creative leadership from trade unionists, van Leeuwen said.
“The real economies in the OECD countries are either already in recession or about to slip into recession. Public funds have been poured into the bailouts, and public deficits are rising, in some cases dramatically,” he said. “Colleagues, this is a time for leadership. We cannot afford to just wait and see. We must defend public funding for education, but asserting that will not be sufficient. We have to convince the public and politicians that investment in education is part of the solution.”
In confronting the dual crises, the officers of Education International are crafting an Action Plan for Education and the Economy, a plan to protect education from the economic crisis and to mobilize political support for investment in education as a critical element in economic recovery. Van Leeuwen emphasized that the plan must maintain EI’s basic principles: that education is a public good not a commodity; that education is about much more than economics; that education is central in our societies in many ways, having both social and economic importance; and, especially, that quality education requires quality teachers.
He noted that in nearly 16 years of EI’s existence the struggle of education unions to put these principles into practice has been arduous. “Now it is going to get tougher, much tougher,” van Leeuwen warned. “The challenges that will confront education systems around the world as the financial meltdown impacts upon the global economy will be unlike any we have experienced previously in our lifetimes. The crisis began in the North, but already affects the whole world. The South, just emerging from mistakes like structural adjustment will be hit badly as global recession takes hold. The MDGs for 2015 are seriously at risk. The financial and economic crisis threatens everything we have worked for.”
He urged the union leaders to emphasize in all their communications with their respective governments that fiscal stimulus packages must directly include “the critical element of investing in people through education.”