Work- an Essential Element of our Humanity

Abstract

It is a fact that today work is in a state of crisis. Unemployment, dismissals, unpaid salaries and imperilled existence... great tragedies on various levels, all testify to this. The UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23 states the following: »... Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests...« This is so only on paper. How can one speak of work as an expression of man's dignity when many have been left jobless? How can this come about when the primary objective everywhere is one's own interest and profit? We can say that the issue of human work is a problem of global dimensions, a problem which prompts us to ponder economic, social and political issues but also, and perhaps primarily so, to engage in ethical-religious and spiritual reflection.