The Director-General of the ILO regrets in his report that trade union membership fell during the past decade in the region by percentages ranging from 1 to 29 per cent depending on the country. This decline, according to the report, has many causes, from the exponential rise in the number of workers on short-term contracts to the increase of work in the informal sector. "All this", says Somavia, "[is] compounded by the harassment of the trade union movement and the violence to which it was subjected in some countries in the nineties, or the movement's own difficulties in modernizing and expanding its representation to the informal sector."
Conclusions
The report looks at some of the causes that have led to the crisis, many of them "closely linked to serious shortcomings in the functioning of democratic institutions and the spread of corruption to an extent never seen before and to a loss in confidence of society in the independence of those in power, their institutions and the judicial system - all of which should be worthy of their confidence".
Conclusions
The report looks at some of the causes that have led to the crisis, many of them "closely linked to serious shortcomings in the functioning of democratic institutions and the spread of corruption to an extent never seen before and to a loss in confidence of society in the independence of those in power, their institutions and the judicial system - all of which should be worthy of their confidence".