Yesterday, 20 Feb 2022, was the World Day of Social Justice, a day fixed in the UN calendar since 2008. It is an interesting day which focuses on understanding and trying to balance the inequalities in development which can derive from unchecked globalization. We have understood for a long time that completely free markets and unchecked, purely economic capitalism inherently lead to the concentration of wealth to fewer and fewer beneficiaries.
The day and its ideas are founded in the Declaration on Social Justice from the International Labour Organization and its history of supporting the social dimension of the outcomes of work since its inception back in 1919.
The 2022 theme is Achieving Social Justice through Formal Employment which address the fact that not only are very high percentages of people informally employed in developing economies but the trend in developed economies is to reduce formal employment and increase informal employment – think the “gig economy”. In many ways, we might see this trend as a backward step in terms of the rights and security of workers and it is certainly reflected in this century’s increasing wage/income and wealth disparities the world over.
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