Today, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan participated in "Promoting Social Justice: The Future of Work in the Current Period" at the international conference.

The event was also attended by the President of the Republic, Vahagn Khachaturyan; the Director General of the International Labor Organization, Gilbert Hungbo; representatives of the legislative power; members of the government; high-ranking officials of various countries; experts; and representatives of science and youth.

The Prime Minister made a speech in which he stated:

"Honorable President of the Republic of Armenia,

Dear Director General of the International Labor Organization,

Dear attendees,

Dear members of the government,

Dear Members of Parliament,

I welcome all of you to attend this important event.

Issues related to work and labor relations, of course, contain significant challenges and, as is said in such cases, great opportunities. Finally, work is the factor underlying civilization and development. According to this logic, work, logic, content, and relationships change significantly over time. Of course, the winners are those countries and societies that are able to address the emerging challenges and contradictions.

During the period of the first industrial revolution, artisans attacked and destroyed factories and machine tools, pushing forward a straightforward and logical question. If machines that will work for us have appeared, what will we do, and how will we earn? This was a very legitimate question. But over time, it turned out that the labor freed by the emergence of factories provided all the further scientific and technical progress because people, having free time, began to think about flying into space. And now the people, to put it very figuratively, who became unemployed due to the first industrial revolution, here they are, or their descendants, are conquering space today.

We are in essentially the same situation today because, with the advent of artificial intelligence, hundreds of millions of jobs will be closed. This situation needs precise management, addressing, and planning.

In addition to global challenges, the Republic of Armenia, in turn, has its own local social and labor policy challenges. The biggest challenge is that the state and society can first realize their development potential through work. Secondly, equally important, the individual can develop and reveal his potential at the work level. These two needs only sometimes coincide because problem one is to ensure that people have the opportunity to work. Problem two is to ensure that people can do work they enjoy, providing them with a certain standard of living. And some discovery and development of potential.

Here are the dilemmas at this crossroads:

Some people work but do not enjoy their work.
Some people have to work to make ends meet.
The rest work for all sorts of reasons. Of course, in recent
Over the years, unemployment has significantly decreased in Armenia. But I must also record that we are facing such challenges that, on the one hand, operate according to the logic of some social declarations and, on the other hand, do not ensure the entire disclosure of the country's economic and individual work potential. For example, the social security system, implemented in the Republic of Armenia today and operating for many years, still needs to meet modern requirements.

We are dealing with a situation every day where the welfare system encourages people to continue to be and remain poor, in conflict with our strategy, which is to "beat poverty with work" because, to be honest, I don't know any other way to overcome poverty other than work. But we see examples when individuals in socially disadvantaged situations and benefited families sometimes receive health care and other services, and from the moment a person decides to work, that is, he tries to contribute to the development of the country's economy and his well-being, we from the next moment on to him deprive us of several privileges, which means that our policy at the level of mechanisms is that the poor continue to be poor and do not take any steps to overcome this poverty.

 

We have been discussing the social security system reforms for many years, and I hope we can implement these reforms because the challenges here are severe.

We are determined to implement these changes, like the problems. They are challenging to solve, but we must go that way. As in other cases, in this case too, in terms of the transformation of the times and the content of work, education and the reforms carried out in the field of education are of great and essential importance because only education will enable a person to find the work that he likes, to find the work methods that he wants. It will bring him greater returns and reveal more of each individual's potential.

Dear attendees,As the Director General of the International Labor Organization already outlined in his speech, all these issues will be discussed. They will be on the conference's agenda. As a result of the conference, we will be more confident in our decisions or find answers to questions, although we are not sure these are the correct answers to the questions placed on our table and included in our agenda.

I wish you success in the conference work.

Thank you."

The event is being held in Armenia for the first time. The conference's main themes are Social Justice in a Time of Global Transformation, Emerging Labor Market Challenges and Social Justice, Social Justice and Women's Economic Empowerment, and Social Justice and the Future of Work.