Asian Job Losses To Complicate Crisis

Asia’s economic crisis will lead to massive job losses without adequate safeguards for workers, a top official of the International Labor Organization said Tuesday.

The collapse of once-booming Asian financial markets has sent jitters around the world in recent months, but the head of the ILO said the worst will come when unemployment rises.

“The problem is not just how many jobs are going to be lost, but how many are not going to be created,” ILO director-general Michel Hansenne told reporters at the start of a regional meeting.

“Globalization, which has brought so much to this part of the world, will not be politically viable if it leads to deterioration of social justice,” he said.

He urged governments preoccupied with meeting conditions for international bailout packages to also turn their attention to creating means to deal with mass joblessness.