Mission Statement

The Decent Work Advocacy Network (DWAN) is an international association of individuals and organizations that share a commitment to promoting scholarly research, public discourse, popular action and policy reform directed at securing what is commonly called the right to work, full employment or simply decent work for all persons.

DWAN's conception of this reform agenda is a broad one. At its core lies the objective of insuring the availability of enough good jobs to provide decent, non-discriminatory, living-wage employment for everyone who wants it. But DWAN conceives of the right-to-work/full-employment/decent-work reform agenda as encompassing a wide range of other goals as well. These include the achievement of equal educational and employment opportunity, the implementation of affirmative action measures to counteract the lingering effects of past discrimination, the protection of the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively, the creation and maintenance of accommodation regimes for disabled or disadvantaged job seekers, the provision of child care and other services for working parents, the creation of social welfare mechanisms to support and fairly compensate socially valuable non-market work, the recognition of everyone's right to paid leisure as well as paid work, and the establishment of comprehensive pension and social insurance systems capable of guaranteeing all persons income security in the face of events such as child bearing, unemployment, sickness, disability and old age.

We believe all these goals are essential components of securing the right to work, achieving full employment, and guaranteeing decent work for all persons. Ending involuntary unemployment is the cornerstone of this agenda, in our view, not because it is inherently more important than the other goals with which it is associated, but because of the foundational role it plays in helping to achieve those other goals. We believe that securing the right to work plays the same enabling role in securing other economic and social entitlements that guaranteeing freedom of speech and association does in efforts to secure other civil and political entitlements. If these cornerstone rights are secured, it is much easier to secure other fundamental rights, but if they are not secured it is virtually impossible to secure a wide range of other rights.

Unfortunately, the commitment of governments to achieving the goals that DWAN promotes has been eroded in recent decades by the resurgence of neo-liberal views concerning the proper role of government in market economies and the desirability of reducing labor market protections in order to promote economic competitiveness. DWAN believes these neo-liberal tendencies are pernicious both because they encourage the sacrifice of economic and social human rights in the name of economic efficiency and because they fail to achieve their promised goals. We believe policies are available that can secure everyone's right to decent work, and that achieving sustainable development in all societies and for all individuals requires the implementation of such policies.

DWAN aspires, through its website and other activities, to create a space where individuals and organizations who share a commitment to these goals can meet, communicate with one another, share information, publicize their activities, and develop relationships that advance their common interests and commitments. Membership in DWAN is open to all free of charge.