III. FUTURE PROSPECTS

 

The employment generation depends on sustained economic growth. This, in its turn, can only occur in the context of stability of prices. The best employment policy is, therefore, the economic development in an atmosphere that is non-inflationary and institutionally favorable to the expansion of public and private investments. The market, however, can not do everything on its own. Economic prosperity is an essential but not sufficient condition for obtaining full employment. Government and society, in partnership, can conceive and implement policies that stimulate job creation, that permit the workers to maintain their job posts and that aid the unemployed working force.

The labor market's capacity of generating jobs depends not only on economic expansion, but also on institutions that regulate its functioning and on the maturity of the labor relations. The degree and nature of market regulation can ease or hinder the capacity of employment response to economic growth, and attenuate or aggravate the conflicts between capital and labor.

The proposals presented by the Government before society should be seen in this perspective. They constitute a large set of measures that, in consensus with society, aim at creating a favorable institutional surrounding so that the retaking of growth conducts the country to an employment situation that is more comfortable than the one obtained in a context of high regulation and inhibition of job growth. And they aim at a modern system of labor relations, that finds in the union strengthening and in free collective negotiation the means for solution to eventual interest conflicts.

The Federal Government's actions to foment employment, protect the worker and establish new bases for relations between capital and labor aim at:

a) enlarging the opportunity for negotiation between capital and labor, reducing the degree of conflict between the parties;

b) strengthening the unions in their capacity to maintain jobs or to reduce unemployment due to productivity increases coming from globalization;

c) generating jobs through the support to micro, small, medium and large enterprises, and channeling resources for investment in economic and social infrastructure, both with FAT and FGTS resources, in order to increase the positive effects of globalization and aid the sectors undergoing structural adjust-ment to this process;

d) increasing the amount of good quality jobs, that are supported by social and labor protections, in the total of the occupation;

e) increasing the amount of job possibilities for the country's working force before the new technological, organizational and managerial standards that are knowledge-intensive, through professional education and offering other job opportunities in the sectors that are more subject to restructuring;

f) protecting the more vulnerable groups of the working force and assuring that workers' legal rights as well as those appearing on agreements and collective conventions are respected;

g) improving the workers' well-being, assuring health and safety at work;

h) reducing the non-wage labor costs through the reduction of payroll taxes;

i) conferring flexibility to the labor law in order to permit new forms of contract and to protect what is freely negotiated between the parties; and

j) integrating the actions of job placement with professional qualification updating and with unemployment insurance, in order to institute an efficient Public Employment System.

By defining these objectives, the Federal Government, in partnership with society as a whole, seeks to change the way the labor issue is dealt with in Brazil. To generate more and better jobs and to elevate the life standard of the workers are, today, challenges before all Brazilians.