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Conference tackles globalization,
personal security, poverty, and job creation
The 90th International Labour Conference adopted a series of measures designed to promote a more rigorous approach to tackling the challenges of globalization, create an "anchor" for personal security through poverty reduction, job creation, and improved workplace health and safety, and reinforce the Organization's tripartite structure.
GENEVA - "Until we see a globalization that prioritizes the creation of employment and the reduction of poverty, the whole concept is going to remain dogged by controversy."
With those words, ILO Director-General Juan Somavia summed up the "exceptionally rich" discussion at the 90th International Labour Conference surrounding globalization, child labour and other issues, and saw a "broad and steadily deepening consensus over the goal of decent work for all".
Two distinguished guests of honour, the Rt. Hon. Dato' Sei Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, and the Rt. Hon. Owen Arthur, Prime Minister of Barbados, addressed the issue of globalization during the Conference. Prime Minister Mahathir said that globalization in its actual form cannot be "the remedy for the social ills of the world" and called for "globalization with a social dimension".
The informal economy: From survival to protection
The Committee on the Informal Economy held a general discussion on a report entitled "Decent Work and the Informal Economy". According to the report, excluding agriculture, informal work is the lot of half to three-quarters of workers in developing countries.
The proportion is particularly striking in countries such as India, where informal workers - including in agriculture - account for 93 per cent of the entire economically active population, and Mexico (62 per cent). The industrialized world is not immune either, the report says. In the 15 countries of the European Union, 30 per cent of workers work outside the standard framework. In the United States, one out of four workers are in this situation, with less than 20 per cent of part-time workers covered by health insurance or an employer-financed pension plan.
In principle, the term "informal economy" refers to all activities of workers and economic units which are - in law or in practice - not covered by formal arrangements. In both cases they are outside the scope of the law. In some countries the term refers to the private sector, while in others it is synonymous with the "underground" or "shadow" economy, even if the workers in the informal economy produce legal goods and services.
At the ILO Committee discussing this issue, representatives of governments, employers and workers noted that most people enter the informal economy "not by choice but out of a need to survive".
According to the experts on the Committee, the growth of the informal economy is more a result of poor governance than of globalization. They attribute it firstly to "inappropriate, ineffective, misguided or badly implemented macroeconomic and social policies".
To reduce the size of the informal economy, it is essential that structural adjustment, restructuring and privatization policies take account of the need to promote employment creation. The first step, where the ILO is concerned, is to ensure that the fundamental labour standards in force in the formal economy are applied to informal work, the delegates concluded.
The Conference adopted a call for a new ILO programme of work which would focus on the issues of employment generation, social protection, and poverty reduction, for those in the informal economy. The new programme should provide a road map for future ILO activities aimed at extending rights to those who don't have them and access to the benefits of labour standards and the global economy.
Other business
The Conference unanimously adopted a Resolution concerning Social Dialogue and Tripartism, giving the Organization new direction in an area the Director-General described as "absolutely essential to our identity". The Resolution reaffirms the importance of the tripartite nature of the ILO as the only international organization where governments, and workers' and employers' representatives can freely and openly exchange their ideas and build a consensus.
The Conference also adopted a Recommendation on the Promotion of Cooperatives, which replaces ILO Recommendation 127, adopted in 1966, and limited to developing countries. The new instrument asks Members to adopt measures to promote cooperatives in all countries to create employment, develop their business potential, increase savings and investment, and improve social well-being. Members are asked to consider the promotion of cooperatives as one of the objectives of national and social development, and to reflect on measures to create an enabling environment to promote the growth of economically viable and democratically managed cooperatives.
Ranging from small-scale to multimillion dollar businesses across the globe, cooperatives are estimated to employ more than 100 million women and men, and have more than 800 million individual members. They are also an important means of integrating unprotected informal economy workers into mainstream economic life.
In the area of health and safety at work, the Conference adopted a new Protocol to the Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 1981 (No.155), and a Recommendation updating a 22 year-old list of occupational diseases. The Protocol asks ratifying member States to establish and review requirements and procedures for the recording and the notification of occupational accidents and diseases, dangerous occurrences, and commuting accidents. The Protocol also asks member States to publish annual statistics following classification schemes that are compatible with the latest international schemes of the ILO or other relevant international organizations.
The Recommendation asks member States to establish a national list of occupational diseases for the purpose of prevention, recording, notification, and compensation. This new list supplements Schedule 1 of the ILO Employment Injury Benefits Convention, 1964 (No. 121), which has not been revised since its last amendment in 1980. The list in the annex of the Recommendation will be regularly updated through tripartite meetings of experts convened by the Governing Body of the ILO.
The Conference examined the implementation report of activities 2000-2001, the first years under a "strategic budgeting" mechanism. In his wrap-up, the Director-General noted that delegates had urged the ILO to "set increasingly rigorous performance indicators that relate to the needs of constituents, and be more aggressive in evaluating how our intervention can best help to redress decent work deficits in a globalizing world".
The Conference also debated the situation in the occupied Arab territories, and heard pledges in support of enhancing ILO efforts to create jobs in the area and promote dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. Mr. Somavia said the ILO would allocate resources immediately with a view to establishing a Palestinian Fund for Employment and Social Protection.
The Conference President was Mr. Jean-Jacques Elmiger, Secretary of State of the Federal Department of the Economy of Switzerland, which earlier this year decided to join the United Nations, after having already been a long-standing member of the ILO.