Our overall theme is "Global dialogue on the future of work". For me, global means the global economy, and what it implies for people and families. Dialogue means voice, debate, partnership and leadership. And the future of work means not so much where are we going, as how can we get where we want to go. Let me address these issues.
First, the global economy
I believe that we are beginning to close the gap between those who would like to stop globalization, and those who think that all is fine and we just need more of the same.
Open markets and open societies have created opportunities for faster economic growth and rising income. Some people and countries are seizing these opportunities. In the global knowledge economy, new types of economic activity and new types of businesses can flourish. Developing countries, too, can leapfrog and use new technologies in creative ways.
But the global economy is working well for too few people, its benefits are not reaching enough countries. Inequality has grown as too many are excluded by lack of knowledge, assets or opportunities. Employment is informalizing and becoming more precarious under the competitive pressures of globalization. Jobs lost are not easily replaced. Many women, men and children feel acutely vulnerable in this changing world.
The answer is to give the global economy the widespread social legitimacy it lacks today by making markets work for everybody. Open economies and open societies have to deliver for everyone. The idea is simple. I believe it's possible. Finding the options that give people a fair deal is not only right and just - it is also the foundation of long term sustainable growth. The future health of the global economy will be fragile if we don't expand opportunities on a level playing field.
As Vaclav Havel reminded us recently in Prague, you cannot have sustained globalization without values, without an ethical framework. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has also called for a globalization of basic ethics to match the increasingly globalized world economy. Recently I was at the Millenium meeting of religious and spiritual leaders in New York. There too, the message was that we must not forget that we need values in the global economy.
When looking at policy options we need to privilege solutions that improve the lives of ordinary people and their families. To do that we need to provide socially responsible governance for the global economy. We need institutions and policies at the global level which promote and reflect common values and goals.
Second, dialogue
To get there we need dialogue and partnership at the global level. But we still have some way to go.
All of this means - and I have cited just a few examples - that we are a long way from real dialogue. Real dialogue means listening to others, and respecting opinions that you don't agree with.
What is needed is leadership - political leadership which can give democratic guidance to the development of global governance. We need business leadership which goes beyond shareholder value to understand the needs and fears of other stakeholders and their communities. We need leadership in the multilateral system and in civil society.
We all have to make an honest effort to look beyond. Governments have to look beyond the next election. Enterprises have to look beyond the bottom line. Unions have to look beyond the next negotiation; non-governmental organizations have to look beyond the next demonstration and international organizations have to look beyond their bureaucratic interests. If we all look beyond we may find that the horizon is closer than we think. We all know that in the final analysis, we have more interests in common than those that separate us. The question is how do we create the instruments and mechanisms to make that obvious reality a fact of life.
Third, the future of work
I want to consider the future of work not as the extrapolation of current trends, or speculations about where we may be ten years from now. The future cannot be a forecast - it must be a goal. The question is the future that we want, and how we can make it happen. The future is not yet written.
I believe the future that people want is a global economy that can deliver opportunities for decent work in a sustainable environment.
I have found that the priority of decent work is clearest when expressed through the aspirations of individuals and families. It is about your job and future prospects; about your working conditions; your ability to balance work and family life, to put your kids through school or get them out of child labour; if you're a woman, it's about gender equality; it's about your ability to compete in the market place and keep up with new technological skills; about receiving a fair share of the wealth that you have helped to create and not being discriminated against; having a voice in your community.
In the most dramatic of situations it's about moving from subsistence to existence. And everywhere, and for everybody, decent work is about securing human dignity. And this is what I find absent from the discussion about the way the global economy should be going.
Today there is a global decent work deficit. Over 3,000 people die every day because of work-related accidents and diseases; 90 per cent of the working age population doesn't have adequate social protection; and half the world's population lives on less than two dollars a day.
At the ILO we are engaged in the struggle to reduce this deficit. Behind the decent work deficit there are yawning gaps in employment, in workers' rights, in social protection and social dialogue, which urgently need to be tackled, which need partnership and a common vision. Today let me address employment and workers' rights.
The employment gap
The employment gap is a fault line in the global economy. A hundred and fifty million people are unemployed, a figure that grows to more than a billion if you include the underemployed.
But we must be careful to remember that unemployment is not just a statistic. Work is probably the most important single element that affects the life of individual human beings. It is critical to one's identity and future; it is the principal means by which people connect to their communities and to the wider economic system. Work is also the primary route out of poverty.
In my travels I often visit child labour projects. In India I visited one which aimed to get the children into school, and to provide work for mothers. When the family gets the first micro-credit loan, when they start to develop new possibilities for work and income, you can see the sense of self-worth emerge. I saw the same in a child labour project in Peru. What you achieve immediately could not be called decent work, but it is the first important step towards that goal. We have to look at policy instruments which empower people to build dignity - policies which help people make steps in the right direction, that is what we have to reinforce.
There are many aspects of the global economy which might be reoriented to deliver more employment. The knowledge economy is the most obvious, as information and communications technologies open digital opportunities. But today for most people in developing countries the knowledge economy is a possibility, the informal economy is the reality. Both are growing together. We must built bridges between the knowledge economy and the informal economy, use knowledge as the key to raise its productivity and strengthen its capacity to take advantage of widening markets.
A number of strategic interventions are called for.
Education, skills and learning are high on the priority list. In the knowledge economy they become the prime determinant of success or failure, inclusion or exclusion. And as the pace of change accelerates, this means constant renewal of skills throughout life.
Gender equality is an equally high priority. Technological change offers opportunities for promoting gender equality, but unless deliberate efforts are made to support this, the old biases persist. Sustained efforts are needed to weaken stereotypes, oppose discrimination and mainstream gender into public and private policy making.
Child labour, beginning with its worst forms, must be eradicated from the face of the earth. It is the very symbol of economic and social systems gone astray.
The key actor in the knowledge economy is the enterprise - new enterprises, with new mentalities, new working arrangements. The firms which grow and create employment are increasingly those which build their success on the knowledge of their workers. And small firms, today's main source of new jobs, need the capital and skills and networks which will give them market access. If the knowledge economy is to reach everyone, small firms are the key. This is true whether you are in Hannover, Hong Kong, Houston or Harare.
New forms of regulation for the labour market are needed which support innovation and change, but at the same time defend rights at work and access. Protection of income and living standards and protection against unemployment are needed in a more volatile labour market - combining flexibility with security. If jobs are lost more easily, pathways back to employment are required.
Gaps in rights and voice
So to tackle the decent work deficit, we need to deal with the employment gap. But there is also a rights gap which is just as important, and has to be dealt with at the same time. It is important to understand that the decent work approach tackles employment, basic rights, protection and social dialogue simultaneously. They are goals in their own right, but they also reinforce each other.
Work takes many forms. People earn a living in the factory, farm, home or street. They can be self-employed, casual or informal workers; paid or unpaid, or homeworkers, mostly women, who rarely appear in the statistics.
Whatever the situation, every person who works has rights. These rights aren't fringe benefits to be gained at a later date or when the economic conditions are convenient. They have to be in on the ground floor. The ILO's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work sets out the basic rights clearly. We are talking about freedom of association and collective bargaining, freedom from forced labour, child labour and discrimination. These rights are valid in all countries regardless of their stage of development, from the sweatshops and "inner cities" of the North to the shanty towns and some export processing zones of the South. These are universal enabling rights.
The worldwide recognition that these fundamental principles and rights at work constitute the social floor of the global economy was first expressed in 1995 at the Social Summit in Copenhagen. The same rights are included among the nine principles of the Global Compact.
Crucial among these rights is the right to voice - to organize and be heard, to be able to defend your interests and to bargain collectively. It is the foundation on which other rights can be fully exercised. We have recently published a report, "Your Voice at Work", that highlights how far we still have to go to make it a reality in so many places.
Going back to the knowledge economy, you can't meet the challenges it poses unless the workers concerned can organize and make their voices heard. New types of organization are needed. Teleworkers can't organize in the same way as workers on the factory floor. Networked or virtual firms don't provide a stable environment for collective bargaining. The global nature of the knowledge economy has made the question of organization a global one too. New global trade union groupings, such as Union Network International, are emerging. Earlier this year, UNI signed a remarkable agreement with the Spanish multinational Telefónica, which covers not only basic rights worldwide, but also questions of skills and access to telecommunications. We can expect more developments like that.
One of the most important priorities for all of us is to make these rights become a reality. To do so, there is a wide range of instruments available which cover a very broad front.
At the ILO we must be the articulators of these many fields of action, helping to build dialogue and consensus on how to move forward. The ILO's task is promote these different routes to workers' rights, and make them part of the foundation of a rules-based global economy.
There is still sometimes a tendency in the organizations which manage the global economy to see workers' rights as an obstacle to growth. We believe, on the contrary, that as part of a broader decent work agenda they are essential for growth which delivers what people are asking for in their daily lives - work, security, dignity. Nor are these objectives inconsistent with economic performance. These rights are not dependent on an economic justification - they stand on their own - but in general they are good for productivity too. And where conflicts of interest emerge, institutional frameworks for dialogue and participation can be designed to bring out the positive synergies. That is what decent work is about. And that is the route to making the global economy work for everyone.
Social justice requires guiding policy-making with a moral compass, ensuring that decisions are based on universally shared principles of equity and equality, without losing sight of the need for sustained economic growth and rising productivity. This is about values and dignity, and how policy instruments can promote them. It's about linking justice and economic progress in practical ways. We don't want to live in a world dominated by a divide between those who live on the cutting edge of the information age, and others who live on the bare edge of survival.
Some may think decent work for all is a dream. I would simply remind them that today we celebrate the tenth anniversary of a German reunification, a dream that many believed could not be realized. The lesson of the end of apartheid, of the end of the Berlin Wall, of the fall of dictatorships across Latin America, is that the demands of people cannot be denied forever.