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New international union body
tackles globalization
The first World Congress of Union Network International (UNI), held in Berlin in September, marked the arrival on the international stage of a potentially powerful new voice in the trade union world.
UNI was established last year with the merger of four smaller union federations, Fiet, Communications International, the International Graphical Federation and MEI (Media and Entertainment International). According to Philip Jennings, UNI's General Secretary, the merger was a conscious response to the process of convergence between the IT, telecoms, and print and media sectors, and to the growth of a knowledge-based service economy. UNI claims 800 affiliated unions in 140 countries, which in turn represent workers in - among other sectors - commerce, banking, IT, telecoms, the graphics industry, the media, tourism and the postal services.
UNI's creation is part of a wider process of strategic reform being undertaken by trade union bodies, as a response to global economic developments. The Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) is currently engaged in a Millennium Review, one result of which is expected to be closer structural links with UNI and the other sectoral trade union bodies, collectively known as international trade secretariats (ITSs). The ICFTU brings together national federations of trade unions, whilst individual trade unions affiliate to their appropriate ITS. Saddled with an unprepossessing name, the international trade union groups have recently announced their intention to rebrand themselves as 'Global Unions', an alliance which includes the 10 sector-based ITS, the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) and the ICFTU. UNI's founding Congress was careful to acknowledge ICFTU's overall coordinating role in relation to world labour policy issues. Nevertheless Bill Jordan, ICFTU's current General Secretary, himself described UNI's creation as the "most significant development in international trade unionism for decades".
Appropriately, UNI was meeting in Germany, which itself has seen a transformation of the familiar union landscape in recent months, with the merger of five unions into the new three-million strong services union.
The German Federal President Johannes Rau, one of the guest speakers at the Congress, told trade unions of the importance for them to act at the international level. "I do not see that it is the mission of an international trade union network to block the globalization process. Rather I see the mission to be to give economic globalization a direction, which leads to more prosperity for all, more justice, more solidarity and more cooperation," he said.
His call was echoed in the subsequent debate on the issue, where UNI committed itself to a position arguing for "a social dimension to globalization". This included calls for the implementation of basic labour standards in future WTO trade agreements, the strengthening of the work of the ILO, the democratization of the IMF, the World Bank, and other international bodies, and measures (such as the so-called Tobin tax) to control short-term international capital flows. As one French trade union delegate put it, "It's not globalization we're against, but a particular idea of globalization - that of an international financial system out of control of governments and people."
UNI's Philip Jennings warned that the globalization process might not survive if it was not linked to greater international equality. He argued that UNI had a role to play in extending social dialogue and partnership from the national to the international level. "We have already signed three global agreements with multinationals - Telefónica, Carrefour, and OTE - and plan many more. The aim is to build effective dialogue with these enterprises," he said. "And if things go wrong we want to be able to help members in trouble, with effective global solidarity," he added.
UNI's Congress delegates had to tackle the uncomfortable fact that trade union membership is falling in many parts of the world. Even in a strongly unionized country such as Sweden, they were told, the percentage of young people who were union members had fallen sharply, down from 62 per cent to 47 per cent in just six years. UNI claimed a role for itself in coordinating international organizing campaigns, with two recent examples having focused on call centre staff and on the mobile phone sector. UNI has also stressed the value of e-mail and the Internet, as international organizing tools.
There was also evidence from Berlin of a growing awareness that trade unions will need to reach out to people engaged in new ways of working. UNI called for rights for what it called "new workers", drawing attention to the particular needs of teleworkers, part-time and casual workers, creative workers, the self-employed, and IT "techies". UNI Congress delegates heard of initiatives taken in several countries, including Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, and the USA, for unions to make themselves relevant to workers not engaged in traditional employee/employer relationships. "Our members increasingly will be working as freelancers, teleworkers, agency staff, subcontractors and pan-continental work travellers," Philip Jennings said. "The bargaining agenda needs to change to deliver family friendly policies that support an increasingly flexible work pattern."
Director-General posts "Decent Work" agenda in Canada
In order to promote a "Decent Work" agenda in the face of growing insecurity in the North and South American workplaces, ILO Director-General, Juan Somavia met with Canadian officials in the capital city of Ottawa. He also addressed the XII Interamerican Conference of Ministers of Labour, held in the wake of the 11 September attacks in the United States.
OTTAWA - After arriving in Ottawa on 14 October, Mr. Somavia discussed the "Decent Work" approach as a productive factor for enterprises and overall economic stability, with several Canadian officials including the Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, the Minister of Labour, Claudette Bradshaw, the Deputy Minister of Human Resources, Claire Morris, and the Minister of Finance, Paul Martin.
Mr. Somavia also participated in a roundtable meeting with the Canadian Employers' Council and met with the Canadian Labour Congress in Toronto before the 18 October opening of the Interamerican Conference in Ottawa.
Throughout these meetings, Mr. Somavia emphasized the ILO's "Decent Work" agenda, which calls for men and women to have productive work in conditions of freedom, security, equity, and human dignity. He urged countries to take the preventive measures of establishing social protection programmes, encouraging social dialogue, and giving priority to job creation, rather than being taken by surprise as in the Asian crisis.
The Director-General also noted that job insecurity had intensified sharply throughout the Americas following 11 September, but added that workers in Latin America were already facing a crisis situation long before, with 45 per cent living in poverty and 35 per cent living without social protection.
"There are 160 million people unemployed in the world and another one billion underemployed," the Director-General said. "We need to work with governments everywhere to make sure that job creation remains a priority. It has to be the issue at the top of every agenda."
"Unemployment, layoffs, and lack of social protection has underpinned a deep human insecurity about the future," the Director-General said. He challenged Canada to take the lead in implementing agreements of the Conference, and committed the ILO to working closely with the countries of the region in this endeavour.
ILO adopts new Code of Practice
on disability in the workplace
The ILO had adopted a comprehensive Code of Practice on disabilities in the workplace. The new Code is designed to enable people with disabilities to integrate into the workplace, and provides guidance on issues such as recruitment, employment, advancement, job retention, and return to work after taking leave.
GENEVA - Unemployment among the world's 386 million disabled people of working age is far higher than for other working age individuals, with rates of up to 80 per cent in some countries. Lack of access to education and training, assumptions that people with disabilities are unable to work, unavailable support services, and lack of supportive legislation, contribute to these high unemployment rates. For a worker in a wheelchair, for example, transportation issues and simple lack of accessibility into the workplace building can preclude being considered for a position or returning to a job after becoming disabled.
"Many people with disabilities can and want to work, yet they are frequently excluded," says IFP/SKILLS Director Pekka Aro about the new ILO Code of Practice on the Management of Disability at the Workplace.
These and other obstacles stand in the way of disabled people earning their own living, supporting their families and contributing to the national economy. The resulting loss is felt at every level, not only by disabled people themselves and their families, but also by employers and wider society.
The main points underlying the Code are the following:
• The social partners ought to promote the "social" model of disability and challenge the "medical" model - the "social" model focusing on removing barriers to disabled persons arising from social factors, and the "medical" model emphasizing the individual's impairment and inability to perform certain everyday activities.
• With the right skills, in the right job, with the appropriate support, employees with disabilities are capable and reliable, and furthermore, an asset to their employers.
• Managing disability issues can be in the business interest of employers, saving them not only time but also money in insurance payments and replacement staff on-boarding costs.
• Employers can benefit from recruiting people with disabilities directly, and also by retaining people who acquire a disability while in employment.
• Organizations of people with disabilities can play an invaluable advisory role in developing disability management strategies.
Despite the efforts of many governments over the last 20 years to introduce and enforce employment equity laws and implement programmes to promote the rights of people with disabilities, the question of disability and the workplace is likely to increase in scope in the future, with the growing incidence of disability arising from such factors as armed conflicts and land mines, the persistence of malnutrition and disease in developing countries, and the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The active participation of the social partners is needed, and along with the adoption of this new ILO Code of Practice, both employers' and workers' organizations are mobilizing to inform and advise their members on disability and labour, and many groups are playing a promotional role at the national level for the development of good practices, making disability an issue of enlightened human resources development/management rather than social welfare.
Forest work and sustainability:
New test case
Can globalization work for both people and the environment? This is the question the ILO is asking in the forestry and wood industry, where the momentum of globalization and unsustainable practices have resulted in significant job losses and increased insecurity for forest-based livelihoods.
GENEVA - Do jobs grow on trees? Not for some 47 million workers in the forestry, wood, furniture, pulp and paper industries, as well as the more than 400 million people living in or next to forest areas worldwide.
Current threats to jobs and livelihoods include raw material shortages in several developing countries, partly amplified by restrictions on forest harvesting and illegal logging. In China alone, such restrictions will affect more than 1.2 million forest workers. In almost all countries, the use of advanced equipment, structural changes, and mergers and acquisitions as a result of globalization have led to a steady decline in the workforce.
In a meeting held from 17 to 21 September, on the Social and Labour Dimensions of Forestry and Wood Industries on the Move, employers, workers, and governments came together to discuss current concerns and to agree on a way forward in the globalizing industry.
Understandably, environmentalists, loggers, and indigenous people living in forest areas have historically clashed in their approaches to the forest industry. Nevertheless, the tripartite participants at the ILO reached a consensus and concluded that globalization and sustainable development of forest resources, the forestry industry, and the people involved, can indeed be compatible and harmonious interests.
It is clear that the forestry industry will be a "test case" in the globalization debate. To rise to the challenge, the industry has pioneered a series of new tools to put the concept of sustainability into practice. The meeting recognized, for example, the value of voluntary, third party certification of good forest management, including "a minimum coverage of social aspects", based on core ILO Conventions and the ILO Code of Practice on Safety and Health in Forestry Work, in promoting sustainable forest management by employers and in communicating the industry's social achievements to stakeholders.
Other measures called for the application of the ILO Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work throughout the industry, particularly in the case of contract forest workers. The meeting also acknowledged that training programmes, reforestation, and promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises will help to reduce uncertainty for forestry industry workers.
Social dialogue at all levels will be essential to developing and spreading good practices, allowing them to become the norm instead of the encouraging exception.
The ILO will have a pivotal role in realizing the goal of sustainable development in a globalizing forestry industry. Specifically, the Organization will establish linkages with relevant United Nations organizations, promote social dialogue in the sector, and conduct research on key indicators in the industry, to ensure that the social and labour concerns, addressed in the ILO Declaration are taken into account in international policy discussions affecting the forestry and wood industries.
World Conference against racism:
ILO attacks discrimination
The Director-General led a tripartite delegation to the Conference, in Durban, where the ILO participated in three roundtables dedicated to issues of discrimination in the workplace. These roundtables included one high-level panel on the UN Global Compact Initiative.
DURBAN, South Africa - "Racism is a workplace issue. Where racism and discrimination exist, workers are faced with them constantly, day-by-day, as they try to earn a living. And if you are unemployed, they are formidable obstacles to getting a job."
With these words, the Director-General defined ILO input to the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held here in September. For the Organization, participation at the Conference was symbolic of its continuing role in the fight against discrimination. Eleven years earlier, Nelson Mandela had come to the ILO to acknowledge the Organization's prominent role in ending apartheid.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Chairman of the ILO Governing Body, Alain Ludovic Tou, and ILO Employer Vice-Chairman Daniel Funes de Rioja, were among the panellists at the high-level meeting. The second roundtable session was a multi-stakeholder workshop, and was attended by representatives of trade unions, NGOs, private business, and UN organizations. Lord Brett, ILO Worker Vice-Chairman, appeared as a speaker at the third and final roundtable session on implementing policies of diversity and equality.
Although there were two controversial issues - regarding the Middle East, and another about whether there ought to be formal apologies and recompense from former colonizing countries to the countries they colonized - which dominated much of the discussion at the Conference and parallel roundtable discussions, the question of discrimination and labour was not ignored.
"The workplace is surely one of the front lines," the Secretary-General said, adding that discrimination was bad for business.
"Discrimination on the basis of gender, race, age, disability, sexual orientation, background, and other qualities, is all too common," the Secretary-General continued. "Statistics have amply documented phenomena such as unequal pay for equal work, "the glass ceiling" that bars women from executive power, and the lack of access to opportunities and services experienced by some groups, but not others... Upholding the universal ideals of equality and human dignity is a virtue in and of itself. But doing the right thing is also good for business."
Mr. Somavia noted the susceptibility of certain social and economic sectors to discrimination, among them children, migrants, minorities, indigenous and tribal peoples, and highlighted the ILO Conventions as tools to protect these populations.
At its conclusion, the Conference adopted a Programme of Action, urging states which have not yet done so to fully apply the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and to ratify and implement the following ILO Conventions: Migration for Employment (Revised), 1949 (No. 97), Discrimination (Employment and Occupation), 1958 (No. 111), Minimum Age, 1973 (No. 138), Worst Forms of Child Labour, 1999 (No. 182), Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions), 1975 (No. 143), and Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, 1989 (No. 169).
The Programme of Action emphasized application and implementation of the agreed voluntary measures, and reflected, in the words of Mr. Somavia, an aim of "moving beyond lip-service".
The ILO also secured the inclusion of several measures to advance non-discriminatory practices in the workplace, such as formal encouragement of States to collaborate with the private business sector to develop voluntary codes of conduct designed to prevent, address, and eradicate racism.
ILO joins UNAIDS
The ILO has formally signed on as Co-sponsor of the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The ceremony on 25 October culminated two years of intense efforts by the Office to launch an AIDS programme and bring its efforts to the forefront of the international campaign against the disease.
GENEVA - The ILO joins the seven existing UNAIDS Co-sponsors - UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, UNDCP, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank - in the joint mission of preventing the spread of HIV, providing care and support for people infected and affected by the disease, reducing individual and collective vulnerability to the virus, and easing the socioeconomic and emotional difficulties caused by the epidemic.
The agreement to join UNAIDS came shortly after the ILO launched a pioneering Code of Practice on HIV/AIDS and the World of Work, at this year's UN General Assembly Special Session in New York.
"HIV/AIDS affects everyone today but has an especially profound impact on workers and their families, enterprises and employers, and national economies," the Director-General said on signing the agreement. "With the accession of the ILO to UNAIDS, we now add the historic force of tripartism - governments, workers, and employers - to the international efforts being undertaken to meet the challenge of HIV/AIDS and its impact on the world of work."
The ILO is currently expanding its Programme on HIV/AIDS and the World of Work with activities in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The programme aims to support the efforts of governments and their social partners at national, sectoral and enterprise levels to combat the epidemic. As a Co-sponsor of UNAIDS, the ILO will be collaborating with UNAIDS partners directly at the country level.
The Organization offers other Co-sponsors direct access to workers and employers as part of its tripartite constituency, and will pool its funds, resources, knowledge, and expertise in the field, to improve upon existing HIV/AIDS programmes.
"The ILO brings to UNAIDS its understanding and expertise in the world of work. We know the workplace is a key location for HIV/AIDS prevention and care programmes," said Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS. "The ILO's Co-sponsorship will considerably strengthen UNAIDS."
Governing Body
Myanmar, globalization, workers' rights top agenda
GENEVA - The International Labour Office (ILO) Governing Body's 282nd session has renewed a commitment to eradicating forced labour in Myanmar, established a World Commission of 18 eminent persons to examine the social impact of globalization and called for a halt to violations of freedom of association in Belarus and Venezuela.
The ILO Committee on Freedom of Association marked its 50th year in defence of the principal of workers to organize and engage in collective bargaining.
The Governing Body also agreed on the broad outline of a technical cooperation programme for Colombia with the goal of creating mechanisms to safeguard the lives of trade union and business leaders in that country while strengthening compliance with freedom of association, as well as improving social protection, working conditions and freedom of enterprise in Colombia.
Myanmar
The Governing Body expressed profound concern over the limited impact of Government measures to end forced labour in Myanmar, and called for a permanent ILO presence in the country to monitor continued efforts to eradicate the practice.
The decision followed a debate on the report of an ILO High Level Team which visited the country in September this year. The Team found that despite legislation introduced one year ago, the practice of forced labour persisted in many parts of Myanmar, especially where the military presence was significant.
During the debate, it was noted that the perpetrators of forced labour, largely the military authorities, could not be allowed to act with impunity from criminal prosecution. The Governing Body called upon the Director-General to provide technical assistance with the implementation of new legislation, including the eventual establishment of an ombudsman.
The Governing Body acknowledged that Myanmar had made efforts to remedy the problem of forced labour and had extended cooperation to an unprecedented investigation conducted by the High Level Team of ILO experts.
The report of the High Level Team said that long-term representation of the ILO in Myanmar "would strengthen the confidence of victims in seeking redress." It could also provide assistance to the authorities responding to the international community regarding allegations made with respect to the continuing practice of forced labour.
World Commission on Globalization
The Working Party on Social Dimensions of Globalization proposed a World Commission of 18 eminent persons. The Commission members, who are expected to be named early next year, will participate in the formulation of a "major, authoritative report on the social dimensions of globalization, including the interaction between the global economy and the world of work."
The choice of members, to be appointed by the Director-General, will include "eminent individuals with outstanding personal achievements and vision, participating in their individual capacity." The Commission report is scheduled to be submitted to the Governing Body at the March 2003 session.
According to the GB decision, the composition of the Commission, should "encompass in a balanced manner the principal views and policy perspectives in globalization debates, thereby offering prospects for the development of consensual solutions with broad-based support."
Freedom of Association
The Governing Body's Committee on Freedom of Association issued urgent calls to Belarus and Venezuela to modify legislation and practices which severely limit trade union freedoms. The Committee also celebrated its 50th year of work defending rights of workers to establish representative trade unions. Currently there are 76 cases pending before the Committee. At its present meeting, the Committee examined 16 cases, reaching definitive conclusions in seven cases and interim conclusions in nine cases.
The Committee issued a request to the Government of Belarus to "institute truly independent investigations into a series of allegations concerning pressure and intimidation of trade unionists and interference in trade union activities through management efforts to establish new union structures." In the case of Venezuela, the Committee noted with regret that the Government had failed to end the functions of Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) in respect of trade union elections and that the CNE decided to enact a Special Statute for the renewal of trade union leadership, "which regulates excessively the electoral process of trade unions." The Committee "reiterated its call to put an end to the functions of the CNE and to repeal the Special Statute."
- Source, Press release ILO/01/49, 20 November 2001