Human.Rights@Work 
ACTRAV's regular newsletter

Contents
World partnerships for fair globalization
World Commission follow-up
Gender equality, fair treatment for migrant workers
Burma: new forced labour cases
Devastating report on trade union freedom in Belarus
ILO shows the benefits of the minimum wage
The ILO and corporate social responsibility
The Governing Body in brief ...
ILO mobilizes constituents against youth unemployment
African employment summit
Future of work and quality in the media, culture and graphical sector
Master programme for the advancement of fair globalization
New Deputy Director for ACTRAV

World partnerships for fair globalization

What kinds of partnership should be promoted among organizations within the multilateral system so that decent work becomes a global objective, furthered by coherent policies that ensure a fair globalization? That will be the central issue when the Governing Body of the International Labour Office holds its 291st session in Geneva on 4- 19 November 2004. Major items on basic social rights, equality, occupational health and safety and migrant workers will also be on the agenda. The ILO will be looking at how it can strengthen its own presence, and the presence of tripartism, within current initiatives on corporate social responsibility.

World Commission follow-up
After providing support for the independent World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, which released its report in February 2004, the International Labour Organization will consider proposals for initiatives that could be taken to strengthen partnerships within the multilateral system in order to follow up on its recommendations. The report of the Commission, co-chaired by President Halonen of Finland and President Mkapa of the United Republic of Tanzania, sparked a wide-ranging debate at the International Labour Conference in June 2004. Since then, many initiatives have been launched to stimulate debate on the Commission's recommendations and related areas.

For instance, on 20 September, the Presidents of Brazil and France and the two World Commission Co-Chairpersons, along with the President of the Assembly and the United Nations Secretary-General, met in New York and urged the UN member states to begin discussions on "A fair globalization: Implementing the United Nations Millennium Declaration". Around twenty other Heads of State and Government, as well as foreign ministers, took part.

Now the ILO Governing Body will be asked to consider concrete proposals to encourage all the multilateral organizations to unite their efforts and embark, without delay, on the achievement of a fair globalization. A document to be discussed by the Governing Body's Working Party on the Social Dimension of Globalization includes a series of suggestions. The ILO, it says, should also provide all its members and constituents with guidance "about how to conduct their social policy in the new and widely different context of globalization".

Detailed proposals will be submitted for action to the March 2005 session. The thrust of the proposed initiativesis that the international institutions should be persuaded to cooperate from the policy formulation stage and to reach consensus on coherent sets of economic and social policies aimed at promoting decent work everywhere as well as globalization with a human face. A first effort to promote coherence is already underway. It concerns policies for growth, investment and jobs. Involved are the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the specialized UN agencies. These institutions met in Geneva on 2-3 November under the aegis of the ILO. Other, similar initiatives are likely to follow. The ILO's assets: its tripartite composition, its system of international labour standards and its capacity for social dialogue.

Gender equality and equal treatment for migrant workers
The Governing Body is to discuss follow-up on the resolution concerning the promotion of gender equality, pay equity and maternity protection, adopted by the International Labour Conference in June 2004. This resolution, unanimously adopted by the government, employer and worker delegates to the Conference, calls upon all governments and social partners to act to "eliminate all forms of discrimination in the labour market and to promote gender equality between men and women". It sets out a whole programme ranging from national policy formulation, ratification campaigns for Conventions 100 and 111 (on equal remuneration and non-discrimination in employment), negotiations between the social partners on workplace-level equality plans within enterprises, and measures to promote women's access to education and training, to the collection and processing of data for the assessment of trends and for the implementation of targeted equality policies. The resolution pays particular attention to maternity protection. As well as a programme of activities to achieve the resolution's aims, the Governing Body will have before it a proposal to place gender equality in the world of work on the agenda for a general discussion at the 2007 International Labour Conference.

Migrant workers: As part of the action plan adopted by the International Labour Conference in 2004, after a general discussion on migrant workers, all the ILO constituents are invited to commit themselves to promote the ratification of the relevant ILO Conventions, namely Conventions 97 and 143, and the application of ILO principles on fair treatment of these workers. The action plan calls for the ILO to elaborate a non-binding multilateral framework for the management of labour migration, based on rights and respecting national sovereignty in relation to migration policy. It provides for the establishment by the ILO, in partnership with other international and multilateral organizations, of a forum for dialogue on migration. According to information provided to the Governing Body, the Director General's initial contacts with the other organizations concerned have proved positive. Meanwhile, major cooperation programmes have been launched in Africa under a project supported by the European Union. The document before the Governing Body proposes targeted activities to promote ratification of the Conventions on migrant workers and the holding of a tripartite experts' meeting which would have the task of finalizing the multilateral framework for submission to the November 2005 session. The ILO should thus be in a position to make a substantial contribution to the high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly, to be held in 2006 on the situation of migrant workers.

Burma: new forced labour cases
Forced recruitment of youngsters into the Burmese army, the requisition of villagers for infrastructural or agricultural work, harassment and intimidation ... The report submitted by the ILO's Liaison Officer ad interim in Rangoon gives scant reason for optimism concerning developments on forced labour in Burma. His "general evaluation" of the forced labour situation "continues to be, as presented previously to the Governing Body, that although there have been some improvements since the Commission of Inquiry, the practice remains widespread throughout the country, and is particularly serious in border areas where there is a large presence of the army".

For 2004, the Liaison Officer has received no less than 72 complaints, many of which concerned groups of people pressed into forced labour. Not much change either in the attitude of the authorities, who generally seem more concerned with denying the breaches than with seriously investigating them. Worse still, in two of the cases that were rejected, the complainants were prosecuted for defamation and were imprisoned for six months each. The Liaison Officer also received information that two people whom he met in Rangoon were arrested upon their return to their village, while three people from Toungup township (Rakhine State) were reportedly detained and interrogated by the local authorities on suspicion of providing information to the ILO about an incident of forced labour in the area which was the subject of an intervention by the Liaison Officer.

And yet, the Supreme Court ruled on 14 October that contacts with the ILO do not constitute an offence. It even ordered that a text concerning contacts with the ILO be deleted from the case against three people condemned to death in November 2003 for, amongst other things, having had contacts with the ILO. It may be recalled that, on 28 November 2003, nine Burmese were sentenced to death for "high treason". Three of them had had links with the ILO, and these links were among the elements cited in the charges brought against them. The Supreme Court initially commuted the death sentences imposed on them. According to the most recent information available, the guilty verdicts against Nai Min Kyi and U Aye Myint, two of those initially accused of "contacts with the ILO", have been upheld, but their sentence has been reduced from three years' imprisonment with hard labour to two years' imprisonment with hard labour. As for U Shwe Mahn, the verdict finding him guilty of high treason has been modified and his life sentence has been reduced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour. The charges against him included one that he had communicated with individuals in Thailand (namely, Maung Maung and Zarni Thwe) who were "members of illegal organizations opposing the Myanmar [Burmese] government".

Of the six other people involved in this case, none of whom had any relations with the ILO, the verdicts of high treason against four, and the life sentences imposed on them, have been upheld. The sentences on the other two were reduced from three years' imprisonment to two.

Devastating report on trade union freedom in Belarus: Various actions by the Belarus government point to the conclusion that the Belarus trade union movement has been, and still is, subject to major interference by government authorities, according to a Commission of Enquiry report to be examined by the ILO Governing Body. The report looked into a number of detailed points, such as trade union registration, interference by the State and employers in the trade unions' internal affairs, anti-union discrimination and the harassment or repression to which union activists are subjected, as well as laws that curb organizations' activities and hamper social dialogue.

The Commission of Enquiry, established under the Constitution of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and composed of high-level independent experts, was appointed by the Governing Body in November 2003, following an official complaint lodged by the worker delegates during the 2003 International Labour Conference. In the complaint, the delegates denounced the arrests, imprisonment, harassment, dismissals and threats to which independent trade unionists in Belarus are subject, as well as the takeover of the national trade union federation FPB by allies of President Lukashenko.

According to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which welcomed the 200-page report, it will probably lead to calls for economic sanctions against the regime of President Lukashenko. In particular, the ICFTU refers to a complaint against Belarus which the trade union movement has lodged with the European Union, concerning the EU's generalized system of preferences, of which Belarus is a current beneficiary.

The commission's report notes that it heard many witnesses give evidence of various means used to oblige workers to change union membership or refrain from trade union activities. Those who refused to be intimidated suffered reprisals. The Commission of Enquiry also concluded that, under the leadership of Mr. Kozik (appointed to head the FPB following a controversial decision), the former deputy head of President Lukashenko's presidential administration, the independence of the Belarus trade union federation has been "seriously compromised". There can, the commission reported, "be no doubt that, under his leadership, the FPB has acquiesced in the various steps that have weakened the independent trade union movement".

The commission "considers it crucial that significant steps be taken in the immediate future to permit trade unions that are outside the FPB structure to be able to form their organizations and exercise their activities freely. It is only in such circumstances that freedom of association can be said to exist in Belarus".

Among its main recommendations:

• Ensure the immediate registration of the trade union organizations associated with the complaint and work for the elimination of all obstacles to the exercise of freedom of association, such as those constituted by the decrees and regulations currently in force.
• Guarantee the freedom of activity of organizations that have suffered interference in their internal affairs, particularly the Belarussian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions, the Radio and Electronics Workers' Union, the Independent Belarus Automobile and Agricultural Machinery Workers' Union, the Belarussian Independent Trade Union, the Belarussian Trade Union of Air Traffic Controllers, the Democratic Union of Transport Workers and the Free Metal Workers' Union.
• Distribute all of its conclusions and recommendations widely and without delay in Belarus.

For several of the commission's recommendations, a time limit of 1 June 2005 was set for the implementation of legislative and other measures.

The report and the government's reply will be examined by the Governing Body.

Photos from trade union protest in Belarus 04.11.04.

The ILO shows the benefits of a minimum wage
Frequent criticisms of the minimum wage by those who see it as a "rigidity" imposed on the labour market are exaggerated, according to a report prepared by the International Labour Office for the next meeting of its Governing Body. The document, which is based on numerous studies, debunks many of the myths surrounding this subject. It concludes that the minimum wage is a useful means of combating poverty, that it helps to reduce inequalities - particularly those suffered by women, that contrary to received wisdom it does not necessarily have a negative impact on employment and that, in some cases, it can even reduce unemployment.

Entitled The minimum wage: Catalyst for social dialogue or economic policy instrument, the document will be discussed by the Committee on Employment and Social Policy before being submitted to the Governing Body. One of the main conclusions to be drawn from its analysis, the report notes, is that "historically, the minimum wage is an issue that more often than not has triggered the development of collective bargaining".

Even admitting that the minimum wage on its own cannot take on this function, it may nonetheless also be seen as an important instrument in the struggle against poverty. Not only does it help protect the purchasing power of wage earners in the formal sector, it also has an important impact on the incomes of workers in the informal sector, who are among the poorest. "The wage paid a formal sector worker goes towards ensuring, in part, the survival of an extended family, whatever the country's level of development. What is more, the minimum wage has an impact on wages in the informal sector in that it provides a benchmark". The report quotes the example of various Latin American countries where the minimum wage constituted a social standard that was followed by the informal economy. The linking of certain social benefits to the evolution of the minimum wage in some countries reinforces its impact on the struggle against even if, as the document states, it should ideally be associated with other measures. In the equality stakes too, the minimum wage passes the test: "first, the minimum wage introduces the same pay threshold for both sexes which immediately cuts down on discrimination; and second, those wage earners at the bottom of the pay scale, the majority of whom are usually women, benefit from the minimum wage".

Usually a matter of controversy, the relationship between the minimum wage and employment also fares well in the ILO report. The empirical studies on which the report is based show that, at worst, the negative impact of the minimum wage on employment is marginal to point of statistical insignificance but also that, in certain cases, the impact may even be positive.

Trade, foreign investment and employment: a document to be discussed by the Governing Body's Committee on Employment and Social Policy sums up the current state of knowledge concerning the impact of trade and foreign investment on employment in the developing countries.

The ILO and corporate social responsibility
A document to be discussed by the ILO Governing Body's Subcommittee on Multinational Enterprises sizes up the various multilateral initiatives on corporate social responsibility. Basing itself on the Symposium on the Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy, held in November 2003, the document outlines a number of steps that the ILO could take to promote the Tripartite Declaration within the framework of current initiatives.

Thus, the report notes that the prospects are good for cooperation between the ILO and the OECD. Recalling that national contact points have been established within the framework of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the report states that the ILO could offer to organize training for these national contact points concerning the ILO Declaration and could provide them, on request, with relevant information on labour and employment issues linked to the cases that are submitted to them. Adopted in 1976 and revised in 2000, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises contain non-binding recommendations which take account of human rights and, since 2000, of the ILO's core labour standards. The 30 OECD member countries have subscribed to these principles, as have eight non-members. The national contact points serve as forums for discussion and may look at cases where one of the parties believes that the guidelines have not been respected.

Launched in 1999 by the UN Secretary-General, the Global Compact comprises ten principles on human rights, labour, the environment and transparency. The ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work is the basis of its social component. Local networks, drawing in government, enterprises, trade union organizations, academics and NGOs, are designed to promote the implementation of these principles. The document suggests that the ILO could help these networks to serve as a framework for social dialogue, by strengthening the capacity of worker and employer organizations to play an active part in their activities.

Corporate social responsibility is also one of the fields covered by the partnership agreement between the ILO and the European Union. The two bodies will soon be setting up a working group on this issue and the ILO intends to conduct activities to increase awareness, among the EU officials concerned, of the ILO Declaration on multinational enterprises.

The ILO also plans increased participation in the World Bank's activities on corporate social responsibility and cooperation with the International Finance Corporation, the Bank's private sector arm, which has built the ban on child labour and forced labour into its loan conditions and also plans to add provisions on freedom of association, collective bargaining and discrimination.

Last but not least, the ILO is also following closely the work of the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, following the proposition for a document on "Norms on the responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights", currently being examined within that body. The Office of the High Commissioner has been asked to prepare a report on this subject for submission to the Commission on Human Rights at its next session in March-April 2005 "...in order for it to identify options for strengthening standards on the responsibilities of transnational corporations ... with regard to human rights and possible means of interpretation".

The Governing Body in brief ...

• Between June 2003 and August 2004, the ILO registered 13 ratifications of conventions relating to health and safety at work. The government of Luxembourg (which will hold the presidency of the European Union from January to June 2005) has just informed the ILO that it intends to ratify 23 conventions of this kind following a tripartite ILO audit of occupational safety and health and inspection systems.
• The Directors General of the World Tourism Organization (which was recently recognized as a specialized agency of the United Nations) and of the International Labour Office have declared their intention of drawing up a cooperation agreement on, amongst other things, employment promotion in the tourism industry, the fight against child labour and promoting the socially, economically and environmentally sustainable development of tourism.
• Enterprises that are members of an employers' organization tend more to have a trade union presence in their companies and engage in more collective bargaining than enterprises which are not members. That is the finding of a survey conducted by the ILO's Bureau for Employers' Activities (ACT/EMP).
• Nine new ratifications of fundamental Conventions have been registered, bringing to 441 the number of ratifications - or confirmations of previous commitments - since the beginning of the promotion campaign in May 1995. Seven of the new ratifications concern the Conventions on child labour. But Convention 87 on freedom of association is still next to bottom on the table of ratifications of fundamental standards, with just 142 ratifications, of which only 2 have occurred within the past 30 months. The worker members will be sure to point out that certain member countries still do not intend to ratify fundamental standards which they have so far not ratified.

ILO mobilizes constituents against youth unemployment
According to the unemployment figures for 2003, young people (aged 15-24) are three and a half times more likely than adults to find themselves unemployed. The total number of jobless young people has grown by more than 25 per cent over ten years, and today there are 88 million of them. So they make up 47 per cent of the world's 186 million unemployed. These figures from a recent ILO study will be at the centre of a general discussion on youth employment at the International Labour Conference in June 2005. But a first tripartite experts' meeting held on 13-15 October in Geneva was an opportunity to pinpoint the problems and start mapping out solutions.

According to the experts, the unemployment rates reflect only one facet of the youth labour market. "All over the world, many young people are putting in unacceptably long working hours, within informal, temporary, insecure employment situations", they declared. All too often, low pay, poor and precarious working conditions, the absence of social protection and the lack of freedom of association and collective bargaining are the rule rather than the exception for those young workers who do have a job.

The experts' view: "Meeting the youth employment challenge calls for an integrated and coherent approach that combines interventions at the macro- and microeconomic level, focuses on labour demand and supply, and addresses both the quantity and quality of employment". The worker representatives strongly emphasized this last point, while pointing out the perverse effects that can be caused by flexibility pushed to extremes and by structural adjustment policies which, without solving the unemployment issues, have negatively affected young people's working conditions. Government delegates also called attention to the relationship between temporary jobs and problems of health and safety at work. Measures aimed at boosting global demand for labour, identifying sectors with youth employment potential, appropriate legislation based on international labour standards, universal, free access to high-quality primary and secondary education - these are just some of the pointers for next June's general discussion. "Clearly, finding decent work for young people to staunch the youth employment crisis is one of the most significant challenges of our time", emphasizes ILO Director General Juan Somavia. Youth unemployment is an economic waste (cutting it by half would enable more than 1 400 billion dollars to be injected into the world economy), but it is also a social threat, the report warns, as it can produce feelings of exclusion and lead to destructive activities. So there is no time to lose.

African employment summit
Twenty-two Heads of State and of Government of the African Union (AU) held an extraordinary summit in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) on 8-9 September, at the end of which they adopted an action plan to fight against the poverty affecting the African continent. The plan is the outcome of two days of discussion and a long period of preparation to which the International Labour Office contributed. Its aim is to break the cycle of poverty by laying the foundations for job creation in Africa, currently devastated by unemployment. Today, the ILO says, only between 6 and 25 per cent of Africans are in waged employment. The others are either unemployed or engaged in the informal economy or in agriculture, which is also often informal. Apart from giving "priority" to employment, the plan's main aims include promoting the private and rural sectors and furthering gender equality. In order to achieve real employment creation, the Ouagadougou document asks governments to implement "reforms" in the private sector, by "reorientating" public sector investment and "restructuring" the industrial and agricultural sectors. During the discussions, AU Commission President Alpha Oumar Konaré argued that the structural adjustment programmes, which the financial institutions imposed on Africa in the 1980s as a means of reviving bankrupt economies, "accentuated poverty" in the continent. The summit called on Africa's partners to "urgently honour their commitments to bring public development assistance up to 0.7 per cent of their GNP". Out of the world's 55 poorest countries, 33 are in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the United Nations Development Programme, they are prey to malnutrition, poverty, illiteracy and a disastrous public health situation.

On the eve of the summit, a social forum brought together the continent's trade union and employer organizations. In their forum's conclusions, the social partners reaffirmed their complete commitment to social dialogue and their joint will to promote decent work, wealth creation and poverty reduction. They drew up a whole catalogue of demands to the African Heads of State and Government, including for the promotion of decent work, respect for workers' basic rights, tripartism, social dialogue, democracy and the adoption of economic and social policies aimed at creating jobs and fighting poverty, backed up by macroeconomic measures and integrated development strategies.

Future of work and quality in the media, culture and graphical sector
New media, multimedia and information and communication technologies may increase the demand for journalists, editors, artistes and others in the media, graphical and culture sectors, but compromise the quality of their work and of their working conditions, according to a new International Labour Office (ILO) report.

The report, entitled "The Future of Work and Quality in the Information Society: The Media, Culture, Graphical Sector", notes that computerization is tending to create jobs in the sector rather than killing them, although some segments are experiencing serious declines in employment.

Conversely, the report also observes that the explosion of new and multi-media is prompting growing concerns over the level of quality of working conditions and of output in the media, cultural and graphical sectors, and presents new challenges in terms of training for jobs in the media and entertainment industry.

Government, employer and worker representatives from around 50 countries discussed the report at an ILO meeting in Geneva (18-22 October) and examined how to respond to the repercussions that these developments are having on the professional groups in the front line of the changes wrought by information and communication technologies (ICT). They confirmed the importance of ensuring that the use of ICT helps to combat exclusion and to promote tolerance, cultural diversity, freedom of expression and of the press, social justice and fundamental labour standards. After an extensive discussion on quality of content in these industries' output (a topic which the employers did not at first wish to tackle), the tripartite participants in the meeting concluded that quality of content is often at the heart of the contractual relationship. The growing use of self-employed workers in the various industries was also raised and, in this regard, the meeting pointed to the increasing presence within the sector of employment relationships that are disguised (bogus self-employment), ambiguous (real doubt as to the independent nature of the work relationship) and triangular (involvement of subcontractors). This situation raises important questions, the participants insisted, and they noted that these issues will be tackled in a general discussion on employment relationships, scheduled for June 2006, which should lead to the adoption of a new instrument.

The meeting was deliberately held between the two phases of the World Summit on the Information Society, the first of which took place in Geneva in 2003, the second being scheduled for 2005 in Tunis. The participants asked the ILO to organize a tripartite discussion during the second phase in Tunis, so that the concerns of the world of work can be expressed during this important summit. The first phase of the summit was particularly disappointing for the workers' organizations, who were disturbed by the absence of references to fundamental labour standards in its debates and conclusions.

Conclusions from meeting.

Master programme for the advancement of fair globalization
An international group of students, trade unions and academics were welcomed to the inauguration of the Master Course on "Labour Policies and Globalization" by Heidemarie Wieczoreck Zeul, the German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Leroy Trotman, the spokesperson of the Workers Group and Dr. Ursula Engelen Kefer, Member of the Governing Body, in Kassel, Germany in October 2004. The Master course is offered by the University of Kassel and the Berlin School of Economics and is an initiative of the Bureau for Workers' Activities in cooperation with the international labour movement and partner universities throughout the world. The course deals in particular with questions of International Labour Standards in the current context of globalization. It is unique in its international composition and its focus and the role and potential of trade unions. The students, who come from 19 different countries, will be taught by an international faculty. The programme is supported by the German Trade Union Federation (DGB), the Hans Böckler Foundation and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES). The Master program will be offered annually and commences each October. For more details and application forms see www.ilo.org/lpg.

New Deputy Director for ACTRAV
Dan Cunniah was appointed Deputy Director of the ILO Bureau for Workers' Activities and joined the department on November 1. Prior to joining the ILO, Mr. Cunniah was Director of the Geneva Office of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and Secretary of the Workers' group of the Governing Body from 1998 to 2004 and of the International Labour Conference from 1999 to 2004. He joined the Africa Desk of the ICFTU in Brussels in 1991 and was transferred to the ICFTU Geneva Office as Assistant Director in 1993. He has also held the position of General Secretary of the Mauritius Labour Congress for 12 years and that of Secretary of the Tea Development Authority Staff and Employees' Union for ten years. Throughout his career, Mr. Cunniah has been a member of various boards and committees and actively involved in the trade union movement.