Greek Crisis * International Labor Organization

MARK WEISBROT, weisbrot at cepr.net, also via Alan Barber, barber at cepr.net

Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Weisbrot wrote a column in The Guardian on Friday titled "Greece: Bond Slave to Europe," which states that debt renegotiation "is going to happen even under the European authorities, but first, they are putting the country through years of unnecessary suffering. And they are taking advantage of the situation to privatize public assets at fire sale prices and restructure the Greek state and economy, so that it is more to their liking. ... The European authorities have more than enough money to finance a recovery program in Greece and to bail out their banks if they don't want them to take the inevitable losses on their loans. There is no excuse for this never-ending punishment of the Greek people."

LEONIDAS VATIKIOTIS, [Greece is 7 hours of U.S. ET] leovat at yahoo.com
Vatikiotis teaches political economy at Varna Free University of Cyprus and has twice been elected to the Economic Chamber of Greece. He was the lead researcher for the recently-released documentary "Debtocracy" on the debt crisis in Greece. English closed captioning available

He also recently wrote the paper "Nominal and Real Aims of Austerity Programmes: The Greek (Extreme) Case."

ABC News is reporting that "ILO Passes Domestic Workers' Rights Bill, but It Will Have Little Effect in the U.S." "The International Labor Organization, an agency of the United Nations, passed a set of international standards -- the Convention on Domestic Workers -- Thursday aimed at protecting the rights of domestic workers around the world."

AI-JEN POO, [in NYC] aijen at domesticworkers.org
Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Poo just returned to the U.S. from the ILO conference in Geneva. She said today: "The ILO is a place where all the members of the United Nations can agree on labor standards. It's a place where workers have a strong voice, a unique venue for global democratic process on labor rights. There are 100 million domestic workers worldwide and we expect many countries around the world to ratify this convention on domestic workers, including most European countries. This should be part of a cultural shift in recognizing this work as real work. In the U.S., there are 2.5 million domestic workers who are typically marginalized or operate in the shadows."