The Caritas in Veritate Foundation recently presented their tenth working paper. Recent decades have witnessed the consolidation of a global economic system strongly characterised by exclusion and inequality as a result of a largely excessive and misplaced trust in the omnipotence of the markets. Today, the distortions and dysfunctions of the free market economy tend to adversely affect the lives of individuals and communities more than ever before. Consequently, work itself, together with its dignity, is increasingly at risk of losing its value as a “good” for the human person and becoming merely a means of exchange within asymmetrical social relations. This calls us to rethink and reconsider what labour is and what it means for the economy, society, policy.

Showing different challenges in the world of work today connected to case studies of action fighting these challenges, the publication gives a broad contribution to ILO’s Centenary Initiative on the Future of Work. One of the case studies presented is YCW Haiti’s action to build a cooperative production of salt in the Jean Rabel salt mine.

The publication was launched in Geneva in the presence of representatives from international organizations, the ILO and the Holy See. At this occasion, the IYCW international president presented the IYCW analysis on youth unemployment as well as the action carried out by different national movements against it. “The fact that youth unemployment is higher than average unemployment rates all over the world indicates that we face youth discrimination all over the world.”

The publication can be downloaded by clicking here.