GENEVA (ILO News) - Globalization needs social and political support if it is to appear other than as "a terrorizing prospect for precariously placed individuals and communities" delegates to the 87 th International Labour Conference were told today in a special plenary address given by Professor Amartya Sen, the Nobel Laureate in economics in 1998.
The distinguished author and economist told the gathering that if globalization is to fulfill its potential, it has to be accompanied by "well-deliberated action in support of social and political as well as economic changes to the conditions that govern our lives and work."
While emphasizing the potential of globalization to raise living standards worldwide, Professor Sen warned that in a world teeming with unemployed and underemployed people only "a significant broadening of national and international efforts to promote equity and protect the rights of workers can transform the dreaded anticipation of the globalization economy into an agreeable and constructive reality."
He applauded the commitment of ILO to providing "universal coverage of all working people, including unregulated wage workers, the self employed and homeworkers" and endorsed the goal of providing decent work as "a banner under which all should rally." He said that "given the massive levels of unemployment that exist in many countries today, it is right that policy attention be focused on expanding jobs and working opportunities. And yet the conditions of work are important too."
He said the notion of an inevitable trade-off between jobs and the quality of work is "often exaggerated and is typically based on very rudimentary reasoning." Furthermore, "even when trade-offs have to be faced, they can be more reasonably addressed by taking a broader and inclusive approach rather than by simply giving full priority to just one group over another."
He supported the comprehensive view of society presented in the report, Decent Work prepared by the ILO Director-General Juan Somavia and presented to the 1999 Conference. Professor Sen called particular attention to the report's insistence on the need for "acknowledging certain basic rights, whether or not they are legislated, as part of a decent society; the practical implications that emanate from this acknowledgement go beyond new legislation to other social, political and economic actions."
He said that the protection of workers against vulnerability and contingency was conditional on the working of democratic participation and the operation of political incentives. By way of illustration, he argued that "it is a remarkable fact in the history of famines that famines do not occur in democracies, because famines are, in fact, easy to prevent and a government in a multi-party democracy with election and a free media has strong political incentives to undertake famine prevention." Similarly, "political freedom in the form of democratic arrangements help to safeguard economic freedom and the freedom to survive."
He said that the recent problems of some of the East and South-East Asian economies "bring out, among other things, the penalty of undemocratic governance." This is so in two striking respects involving the neglect of two crucial freedoms, protective security and transparency guarantees, both of which are related to safeguarding decent work and to promoting decent lives.
The ILO Director-General, Mr. Juan Somavia, warmly welcomed Mr. Sen's participation in the conference proceedings as a symbol of the fact that "the ILO needs to become a knowledge based organization" which could draw upon the advice and wisdom of one of "the most original and creative thinkers of our time", whose intellectual distinction has been matched by an abiding concern for people and for human welfare.
Amartya Sen is currently Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Professor Emeritus of Harvard University. He was Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford and a Professor of Economics of the London School of Economics and Delhi University. The recipient of Doctorates from over 40 leading Universities in the world, and he won the Nobel Prize for Economics last year.