GENEVA (ILO News) - Plans to sharpen the strategic focus of ILO activities will be at the heart of a programme and budget proposal of US$ 481,050,000 for the 2000-2001 biennium, which will be presented by the incoming Director-General of the ILO, Mr. Juan Somavia, to the Office's Governing Body members, whose 274 th Session gets underway at ILO headquarters in Geneva on Thursday, 4 March.
Also on the agenda of the 274 th Governing Body are specific proposals to implement the follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and a special discussion on the social consequences of the Asian financial crisis. The Governing Body will also discuss the issue of forced labour in Myanmar.
The new Director-General, who officially takes office on 4 March, described the budget proposals as "an integral part of a wider process of change that will include the establishment of clear priorities, reallocation of resources and adaptation of the Organization's management structures and programme activities to translate these priorities into action". The first sitting of the Programme, Financial and Administrative Committee takes place on Monday, 8 March.
The budget sets out four strategic objectives for the ILO at the turn of the next century: to promote and realize fundamental principles and rights at work; to create greater opportunities for women and men to secure decent employment and income; to enhance the coverage and effectiveness of social protection for all; and to strengthen tripartism and social dialogue.
Mr. Somavia said that the new strategic focus "will concentrate and integrate activities already under way while responding to new needs and demands for maximum impact and coverage". He said that he wants to develop a more pragmatic, goal-oriented agency "because, the ultimate barometer of success or failure for ILO activities is the positive or negative effect of those activities in the lives of individual men, women and children".
He added that a number of key elements of the ILO's future work programme remain to be decided by the Governing Body and the International Labour Conference and cited a particular need "to develop a built-in rapid response capacity to address unforeseen events in order to be able to come quickly to terms with critical situations affecting the world of work, such as those unleashed by the Asian financial crisis".
The current proposal increases resources for all the regional programmes, with greatest emphasis on Africa and Asia. In the 2000-2001 budget proposals, net cost savings have enabled a small increase in real expenditures of US$ 785,000 compared with the current 1998-99 biennium, a sum which will be applied to substantive programme activities.
Asian Crisis: the social fallout
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The ILO estimates that at least 5 million jobs have been lost in Indonesia alone. Thailand and the Republic of Korea have seen unemployment surge from very low levels to approximately 8% of the workforce in both countries. Countries throughout the region are experiencing record levels of unemployment.
The high levels of retrenchment in the job market are "largely uncovered by any form of unemployment insurance", the report says. As increasing numbers of workers have fallen into underemployment and self employment, "the earlier declining poverty trends in the region have been reversed".
Indonesia, the hardest hit country, has seen a sharp increase in poverty by the end of 1998 due to a loss of wage employment and inflation. In both Thailand and the Republic of Korea, poverty is estimated to have increased significantly, notably as a result of job losses and wage cuts.
Women workers are particularly affected by the crisis, the report warns. In the Republic of Korea "women faced a greater probability for retrenchment: they accounted for 86% of the total number of retrenched workers from banks and financial institutions". Last year, "women's share in wage employment fell by 20% compared to the men's share, which fell by 6%".
In Indonesia, women bore a more than proportional share of the retrenchment burden. In Thailand, which has the highest female labour force participation rates among the crisis hit countries, there is "evidence that women workers, especially in manufacturing and finance, have been harder hit than men". Particular forms of women's work have been harder hit: "in the Philippines, 90% of the new homeworker schemes to generate employment and income in some regions were estimated to have closed down", the report notes.
As job prospects and earning opportunities fade, "the risk factor for child labour is increasing as families are pressured by the crisis to reduce expenditure", notably for education, the report warns.
Migrant workers have borne a particularly heavy burden thus far. The number of migrants in the East Asia region is estimated to have dropped by about 1 million since the crisis began as job prospects dwindle and other migrants are returned home. "In Thailand the number of migrant workers had declined by 460,000 by mid-1998, in Malaysia by 400,000 and in the Republic of Korea by about 117,000", the report says. Once again, women migrant workers, whose activities are concentrated in the service sector, domestic work and the entertainment industry, are likely to have been sorely affected by the trend.
A 1998 ILO study of the crisis concluded that "A fundamental rethinking on the social dimension of economic development is as important as the purely economic and financial issues that currently occupy centre stage in South-east and East Asia." It argued that "the strengthening of democratic institutions is central to the post-crisis economic model that is required" and that "Asia needs a new and better social contract." These and other aspects of the ILO response to the situation in Asia will be discussed in detail in a special meeting to be held on 19-20 March.
Follow-up action on the ILO Declaration
At its last session in November 1998 the Governing Body decided on the timetable for the two components of the follow-up action on the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work adopted by the International Labour Conference in June 1998. Requests for information for the annual report will be sent immediately after the present session of the Governing Body so it can conduct a first review at its session in March 2000; while the first global report, on freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, will be prepared for discussion at the International Labour Conference in June 2000.
At its present session, the Governing Body will decide on specific proposals to settle a number of outstanding technical questions related to the follow-up. These include the sequence of the global reports which should be in the order provided by the Declaration (freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, forced labour, discrimination in employment and effective elimination of child labour), the composition and number of experts charged with presenting the conclusions of the annual reports to the Governing Body, and the form that requests for information on non-ratified Conventions should take.
Myanmar
At its November 1998 Session the Governing Body examined the report of the Commission of Inquiry concerning the observance by Myanmar of the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), established under article 26 of the Constitution of the ILO. The two replies from the Government of Myanmar to two letters of the Director-General of the ILO seem to confirm that the Government is for the moment working exclusively on the legislative amendments recommended by the Commission of Inquiry. No information had been received yet concerning a halt to the actual widespread imposition of forced labour in the various forms in which it is practised in the country, and the enforcement of penalties for its imposition.
The various Committees of the Governing Body will examine such issues as freedom of association, ILO action against discrimination in employment and occupation, country employment policy reviews and ILO programmes concerning occupational safety and health.
The Working Party on the Social Dimension of the Liberalization of International Trade will continue its discussion on codes of conduct and social labelling. The Working Party will also examine a new series of country reports on the social impact of globalization.
The Governing Body, composed of 28 government members 1 , 14 employer members and 14 worker members, convenes three times annually. It is the executive arm of the ILO and takes decisions on the implementation of ILO policies and programmes. Ten of the government seats are permanently held by major industrialized countries. The remaining members are elected for three years by governments, workers and employers respectively, taking account of regional distribution.
1 Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil*, Canada,
China*, Colombia, Congo, Egypt, France*, Germany*, Guinea,
Hungary, India*, Italy*, Japan*, Republic of Korea, Mauritius,
Nigeria, Panama, Poland, Russian Federation*, Saudi Arabia,
Suriname, Swaziland, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom*, United
States*.
(* = members holding non-elective seats as States of
chief industrial importance).