"Promoting Decent Work: The Role of Civil Society"
 Concluding Remarks
Mr. Gopinath - Director, IILS; and Counsellor to the Director General of the ILO
I agree it's been a very rich and fruitful discussion and I want to express my gratitude to all those who
participated. Let me make just four observations, very briefly on what I think is significant. The first is that there seems
to be a general recognition that coalitions for action are necessary to tackle new problems. We have to deal with problems
in the informal sector, problems in decentralizing the role of the state, and we need to reconcile competitiveness and
social cohesion. These are problems which demand a new sort of a coalition.
My second point is that functions are becoming as important as form for the traditional social partners as for the new civil
society actors. And these functions are going to determine the terms of cooperation between them.
Thirdly, I think this meeting has opened up a completely new agenda, which deserves to be discussed further, and that is
the need to have a new look at government and the state. I think the way it interacts with social coalitions is going to be
crucial in future. Professor Zamagni has also referred to this in terms of institutional legal support.
Finally, I would like to respond to the very constructive proposal made by Mr. Ennaceur about the future, and I think the Institute has already
written into its programme a series of activities to deepen the dialogue which you have started.
Mr. Tapiola - Executive Director, Standards and Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work Sector, ILO
In trying to briefly sum up, I cannot not do justice to the discussion because I would need a different sort of conclusion for
the first part and the second. I think we have to analyse some of the observations from the first part more closely and see
what we really need to examine in our own work. There was a rich variety of observations which lead
me to think that there are similarities with the ways in which solutions were sought in what afterwards has become the
structured and established labour market. We may be in a process where normal development is for the informal to
become formal and structured, and follow the way of the rest. But as Mrs. Jbhavala from SEWA pointed out,
development is not necessarily going in that direction, it is going somewhere else. This is why we have to question some of our assumptions
and keep analysing them.
The short conclusion that I would like to draw from the second part of the discussion concerns the expansion of the
dialogue and its extension to cover new actors. We are not debating whether that should take place or not; it is taking
place, and the real question is: "How does one do that?" What kind of expansion? What are the parameters?
Are we talking about something that could be called "bargaining plus"? If this is the case, then it of course is an
extension of the traditional process. Is the nucleus intact or does the nucleus change as well? This raises the question of a
possible comparison with bipartism, (direct employer-worker negotiations) and tripartism. As viable tripartism
presupposes functional bipartism. If we are building on this, then the hypothesis might be that the tripartite nucleus is more or less
intact and this should be a comforting message for those who fear a dilution of existing processes or structures. On the
other hand, the message is that we need broader partnerships and the existing structures may not survive unless this
broader aspect is introduced. This is driven home by the fact that it is at a time of crisis that you start looking at how you
function. For instance, the whole experience of South Africa in coming out of Apartheid and trying to build a democratic society,
leads to the conclusion that you need to broaden your alliances.
This leads back to Mr. Marshall's point. The question is not of involvement but of how it is managed. He talked about
additional resources which may be the same thing as "bargaining plus". If the employers' and the workers'
logic join together, is that suspicious? Should we feel that there is a conspiracy? An old style corporatist way of looking
at things? Or is it an expansion of collective bargaining and a searching for consensus? I think it is important to see
how this links with community involvement. The kind of things that Mr. Marshall was talking about bring in the elements
of ownership and engagement and initiative which should function as safeguards against corporatist tendencies
because they bring a measure of transparency and engagement. We need imagination and common sense.
All that Ms. O'Donovan and Mr. Marshall were saying was underlined by the South African example. Mr. Mbongo's
first important observation was that social dialogue is a factor of economic growth and it needs mechanisms. He pointed
out that one-size-fits-all solutions are not feasible; you have to examine each situation separately. Perhaps we
should have a look at typologies of issues and organizations in order to understand which structures and solutions fit
which situations. Innovative partnerships can bring about results which traditional tripartism cannot produce. Thus we need an
outreach, "bargaining plus", and activating factors which bring the ownership issue into this.
In this way we should be able to channel some of the energy from Seattle or Washington D.C. in a constructive and productive direction.
I would like to conclude by thanking all the participants, the panelists and the organizers of the meeting.
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