Labor
Paraguay’s formal labour force was estimated to total about 2.7 million workers in 2004. About 45 percent worked in the agricultural sector, 31 percent in the industrial sector, and 19 percent in the services sector. Unemployment was estimated at about 15 percent. Paraguay’s constitution guarantees the right of workers to unionize and bargain collectively. About 15 percent of workers are members of one of Paraguay’s 1,600 unions. Strikes are legal and not uncommon.
The 2001 census found that 5 percent of Paraguay’s workforce was under the age of 14. Although Paraguay ratified the International Labour Organization’s Minimum Age Convention in 2004, child labour continues to be prevalent. Nearly 14 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 17 are employed, many in poor conditions and for negligible pay. The government has mandated a minimum wage of approximately US$158 per month for private-sector employees. Government employees have no minimum wage. The standard workweek is 48 hours. In 2004 Paraguay’s unemployment rate stood at 15 percent.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of Paraguay
Famous quotes containing the word labor:
“So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.”
—Bible: New Testament, 1 Corinthians 3:7-9.
“In 1845 he built himself a small framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native and fit for him. No one who knew him would tax him with affectation. He was more unlike his neighbors in his thought than in his action. As soon as he had exhausted himself that advantages of his solitude, he abandoned it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Cultivated labor drives out brute labor. An infinite number of shrewd men, in infinite years, have arrived at certain best and shortest ways of doing, and this accumulated skill in arts, cultures, harvestings, curings, manufactures, navigations, exchanges, constitutes the worth of our world to-day.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)