By Elizabeth Olson Special to the International Herald Tribune
GENEVA - Globalization and increasing trade liberalization have meant job losses and new, less secure work arrangements, the International Labor Organization said in a report published Tuesday.
The report added that 75 percent of the world's 150 million unemployed people have no jobless benefits.
Europe leads in providing the most generous unemployment benefits to its workers, but even in its wealthy countries, there were reductions in unemployment insurance in the 1990s, according to the ILO's "World Labor Report 2000."
The United States also cut back on benefits, and has slipped to the middle rung of worker protection, the study reported. It is joined by Australia, Canada, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand and Britain, all of which provide a lower level of benefits than countries in the first tier.
Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland make up the top-tier countries with the most benefits for the greatest number of workers.
The entrenched system of benefits, and the resistance to efforts to pare it back, have raised criticism that the European countries are too burdened with social costs to compete effectively with economies providing a lesser level of benefits.
Roger Beattie, the labor report's chief author, labeled such criticism as "naive" and said that the study indicated that countries can put a secure floor under workers while expanding their economies.
"Countries can increase social security spending, and it will take out only 20 percent of future real increases in earnings," he said.
Worker protection in economies being rapidly changed by globalization and trade liberalization is essential, he said, "because people who are well protected are far more willing to accept such changes."
The ILO's director-general, Juan Somavia, warned that recalcitrant countries could "eventually suffer a destructive backlash" by workers.
Most workers with unemployment benefits are in industrialized countries, but for some 750 million to 900 million underemployed people, "hardly any unemployment protection exists at all," according to the report. Many of these people are women, who need to have some protection extended to them, Mr. Beattie said. The ILO defines underemployment as part-time workers and those working at a lesser level than their training or qualifications would warrant.
The ILO study reported that the most generous countries, such as Spain, replace from 63 percent to 77 percent of wages. New Zealand is among the lowest, at 23 percent wage replacement. Canada and the United States provide about 58 percent of replacement wages.
But the two North American countries and Britain also provide unemployment benefits for only 12 months, which is described as short in the report. Also, neither the United States nor Canada provides a second layer of unemployment assistance when initial insurance benefits are exhausted.
In the past decade, most industrialized countries cut back on unemployment, tightening eligibility and cutting benefits, the study said.:
