Dear colleagues,Ladies and gentlemen,

The year 2025 humanity honors the great victory of the peoples against the fascist – Nazi onslaught. In 2025 WFTU celebrates 80 years since its foundation. It is not a coincidence, of course. The new breath of fresh air that brought with it hope for a better world, with peace, democracy, and social justice, was the same that resulted in the creation of the WFTU on October 3, 1945.

Unfortunately, 80 years later, these hopes and expectations do not seem to have been fulfilled. The imperialist wars, interventions, sanctions, and blockades continue and intensify. Fascism is on the rise and threatening again.

The genocide of the Palestinians of Gaza from the murderous Israeli state continues unabated, with the support or the tolerance of USA, EU and their allies. The rights of Palestinian workers have been brutally violated for decades. It is high time at last that the Director-General’s report on the situation of workers in occupied Palestine, is not merely a description of the dramatic situation, but it should also recommend effective measures for those suffering the consequences of the occupation and Israeli apartheid. As far as the elevation of the status of Palestine from a “Liberation Movement” to a “Non-member state observer”, it is the least that the ILO should decide.

In today’s world, the reality experienced by workers is one characterized by unemployment, precarization, temporality, insecurity, uninsured work that is expanding and consolidating, deregulation, and the deterioration of living and working conditions. Democratic and trade union freedoms are shrinking, social goods and benefits are being privatised, and the arbitrary increase in retirement age thresholds is being systematically continued.

For the sake of the profitability of multinational companies, the system resorts to a “war economy”, which, apart from being a threat to world peace, means even harsher policies of austerity and social inequality. This is the brutal reality, which cannot be concealed behind the catchy slogans adopted by the ILO about “new social contracts”, “decent work”, etc.

What workers are demanding are decisions and policies that practically support their rights and freedoms, not declarations and empty words without impact.

The encouraging and hopeful aspect of this picture of today’s world, is the fact that workers are not passively accepting the anti-grassroots and anti-worker capitalist attacks; rather they are choosing the path of struggle to meet their contemporary needs and defend their trade union, social and political rights. Their weapon is solidarity and internationalism.

The WFTU remains firmly committed to these principles. It continues its 80-year path with the same vision that inspired its founding: a world without wars and imperialist interventions, without exploitation and discrimination.

A world where work will be permanent, stable, regulated, and safe.

Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues Before I leave the floor, allow me to refer to a discussion that is not currently before the plenary but has started in the governing body, on the democratization of the ILO’s governance.

In our point of view, for this debate to be worthwhile, it must begin with the abolition of the unacceptable monopoly of workers’ representation by a single International Trade Union Organisation.

We know that employers and governments are satisfied and comfortable with this monopoly. They thus avoid annoying voices defending the class interests of the workers and opposing the double-standards policy and the selective targeting of countries for the convenience of the dominant circles. Nevertheless, the WFTU will never stop fighting for a representative and pluralist ILO because that is what workers and their unions need.