If you think the dominant orthodoxy - shrink your economy, render workers jobless, impoverish families, and still grow - is an oxymoron... then you would be right.
The corporate community understands the need for rules. Indeed, it argues for regulation to protect intellectual property, physical property rights, and contract law. So why does it oppose global regulation to protect people and the environment?
What Qatar chose is a system where a worker is owned by his employer. When your employer forces you to live in squalor, makes you work longest hours in extreme heat, doesn't allow you to change jobs, doesn't pay your wages on time, abuses you physically and psychologically, you have no way out, you can't leave. You are trapped.
When working men and women have secure jobs with living wages and social protection, they can invest in the economy at levels which will increase demand and help overcome the twin challenges of ageing populations and economic stagnation.
Large swathes of people losing faith in democracy is a dangerous thing. Conflict, desperation, totalitarianism are the products of that loss of faith.
Trade unions have stood at the front lines of struggles for democratic change and social justice throughout history. In many countries, we are the organized voice of oppositions to governments operating at the behest of corporate power and vested interests.
When women are expected to bear the burden of unpaid work, everyone loses.
We need a multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance, not vested interests in making citizens pay for formerly free services or restrictions to their capacity to share information.
I've had an enormously privileged working life.
