UNIn maailman kongressi - Including you in taking back our economies

Joonas Tuomivaaran puhe UNIn maailman kongressissa 9.12.2014

Hi all fellow delegates, guests and of course the chair of the congress and everyone else participating! My name is Joonas Tuomivaara and I come from Finland and represent PAM, our service union united!

It’s been great honour to be here and to hear your touching but still hope giving stories. Especially in the women’s conference where women so openly opened their deep scars to us by telling the unbelievably shocking things that they’ve confronted. Yet still seeing that sharing them with us all, we could have much stronger fight in the name of solidarity! Fight of equality! Fight for the right to us all to have same opportunities for health, for safety, education, to work and have a living wage and for social welfare.

To achieve all that, I believe one thing we should do, is pressure governments all over the globe to regulate international laws for the corporate taxation. We should demand world-wide minimum tax rates. This would stop the race to the bottom. It would stop the corporate tax evasion.

More importantly, it would help third world countries become wealthier and they would be able to provide their citizens possibility to healthcare, education and welfare. That would give us purchasing power and this way creates new work places. It would also give more permanent jobs, because corporation wouldn’t benefit that much of changing country every decade or so.

Actually I believe that the global regulation of the corporate taxation is the only way to put our hands to the pockets of the richest and share the wealth more equally. So lets’ get rid of their chains of poverty and stick our hands to their pockets and get our fair share.

Especially we on the service sector should be very concerned, because our work can’t be taken out of borders in same way than the manufacturing industry for example. That leads to the point that we are paying more taxes compared to others. But I think we can also demand all the global unions to take action.

IndustriAll has its own needs for global minimum tax rates. I bet that job security would be one. Now the race to the bottom let’s factories leave behind only raped nature, poverty and deep hopelessness.

We should get also ITF, International Transport workers Federation, on board. They can stop the goods to the seas, to the borders and warehouses. Consumers couldn’t buy them. It would force the corporations to consider their perspective again. Perhaps they would see that it’s better to have even small profits than none.

I hope Jyrki Raina from IndustriAll sees this as a good way to get to the point also where electronics will be done sustainable way. Imagine thousands of phones, tablets, laptops and tv’s in vessels just floating around or in the ports and in the warehouses. And the empty shelves in the stores. I bet that even the biggest corporations would hear us and bend in front of our demands.

I hope Sharan Burrows sees potential in these ideas to take them to the ITUC, and its member unions.

Together we can win these fights. So let’s fight to take back our economies. Let’s fight for the fair taxation so we can win ourselves more equal world for all of us. Let’s fight back the power to the people. Breaking corporate power is the greatest fight of our times. It’s them who are not willing to make changes! Changes to save the globe. Changes towards humanity! If we just decide, we will win these fights!!

Thank you!