GENEVA (ILO News) - Mr. Jorge Fernando Branco de Sampaio, President of the Portuguese Republic and guest of honour of the 88 th Session of the International Labour Conference, today called on the international community of intellectuals, writers, artists and reporters "to support with the same generosity that led you to side with great causes of mankind, the International Labour Organization in carrying out a world campaign to dignify work."
Urging them to use all means at their disposal, Mr. Sampaio called on them "to raise awareness of international public opinion to the injustice of the inequalities and exclusions that continue to prevent full realization in the labour world of the human being's extraordinary capacities for creation and progress".
Speaking in Portuguese from the rostrum of the 88 th International Labour Conference, Mr. Sampaio pointed out that "systems of social values and aspirations, relations between citizens and nation States and between the various countries and regional spaces are conditioned nowadays by factors that did not exist when the International Labour Organization was created and developed". These factors include the globalization of financial flows and business activities as well as the development of new information technologies. Their advent, said the President "have altered the premises of economic development, social solidarity and the governability of contemporary societies".
"While creating unprecedented opportunities for development (these factors) have worsened the situation of inequality in which vast regions of the world and broad sections of the population live."
In the face of these transformations, "I do not believe that the imperatives of entrepreneurial competitiveness would condemn us to opt, as mutually exclusive possibilities, between economic efficiency and social justice", said the President.
"I refuse the thesis", he added, "that the intervention of national public powers and international organizations is so limited today that in many cases it would be incapable of ensuring the performance of civic and political rights whilst at the same time it would transform social rights into a luxury affordable only in wealthier regions and even then only during more prosperous times."
Rejecting the "speculative logic of the financial markets", Mr. Sampaio stressed that it was necessary to develop a debate "on the ways to regulate and discourage conspicuously speculative financial movements".
"I am convinced that unless we move in this direction we will gradually lose all hope of introducing added rationality in the international economic system", he said.
Acknowledging that the "European welfare state has been under fire" and "criticized for allegedly being responsible for the loss of European competitiveness", Mr. Sampaio nevertheless included himself "in the group of those who consider that the so-called European social model, comprising its system of industrial relations, is behind the decades of economic growth and social progress of democratic European countries in the post-war era".
Adapting to change, however, is necessary. "Reinventing the conditions for full employment, adapting industrial relations systems to economic change and the new social divisions and improving the level and equity of social protection systems in terms of existing or foreseeable changes are obviously important tasks that require no underlining." This will require "restructuring social protection systems to eradicate poverty; facilitating social integration of the more vulnerable groups; in short, restricting inequalities and promoting social equity and dignity for the working world".
Reaffirming the adherence of Portugal to the core values embodied in the ILO's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work , Mr. Sampaio underlined his conviction "that the human dignity and the social progress of mankind have much to expect from the follow-up methods" that form part of the Declaration. "Portugal" he said, "is proud to belong to that group of countries that have ratified eight conventions concerning the ILO norms that give body to those four pillars of fundamental labour rights."
"Portugal is optimistic about the ILO's role in the modern world", said Mr. Sampaio. Referring to bilateral and multilateral cooperation extended to Portugal by the ILO in Portuguese-speaking Africa and in the context of efforts to eradicate child labour from Portugal itself, Mr. Sampaio described the results obtained as "largely positive" commenting that "this gives us added reason to be enthusiastic about cooperation with the ILO, both by developed countries and those where the levels of development are less consolidated".