Conclusions on labour practices in the footwear, leather, textiles and clothing industries

The Tripartite Meeting on Labour Practices in the Footwear, Leather, Textiles and Clothing Industries,

1. Owing to their global nature, the footwear, leather, textiles and clothing (TCF) industries are highly influenced by the pressure of international competition. This pressure has an impact on the viability of enterprises and influences labour practices. In this context, therefore, developments in labour practices should adopt an innovative approach by taking into account the social dimensions of globalization and strive for improvements in the competitiveness of enterprises, stable employment and better working conditions.

2. The TCF industries play an important role in the world economy. They generate large flows of trade, are a major creator of employment and substantially contribute to the initial stages of the process of industrialization in many developing countries. Over the last 20 years the TCF industries have undergone major changes. Large distribution groups, which have sometimes taken the place of traditional producers, have emerged; there has been a trend towards national and international contracting and subcontracting; and there have been waves of relocations, notably in the clothing industry, in response to changes in the criteria governing international competitiveness. These factors influence the global landscape in which TCF industries operate and, as a consequence, the development of working practices. In view of the mixed results of globalization, the effective implementation of core labour standards should be taken to ensure that the advantages of globalization are fairly distributed to the benefit of all. Efforts should also be made to assist those developing countries and economies in transition which suffer as a result of the growing international competitiveness in the TCF industries.

3. The TCF industries cover a wide range of activities carried out by: large enterprises in the formal sector; many small and medium-sized enterprises; and the informal sector. To create the conditions to ensure that all these producers can continue their activities in the long term and create stable, more skilled employment, special attention should be given to improving the efficiency of small and medium-sized enterprises and to the organization of the informal sector with a view to its gradual integration into the formal sector.

4. The demand for greater product quality and diversity requires enterprises to be more flexible in their operations. Effective strategies have to be based on social criteria as well as economic and financial ones. Adapting labour practices to the constraints of the markets should take place in a way that benefits all parties - the enterprises, the people working there, and the community at large. To achieve this objective employers' and workers' representatives⁽¹⁾

should engage in social dialogue in an atmosphere of mutual trust and a spirit of partnership.

5. Given the concerns raised by the dismantling of the quota system and the relative stagnation in global demand, one means of opening new markets to the TCF industries, and thus of ensuring greater employment stability, would be to improve purchasing power in developing countries. This would require the implementation of economic and social policies as well as foreign assistance which would promote development in their national markets. Moreover, the uncontrolled import of second-hand clothing causes substantial harm to the local industry and results in employment losses. The channels of distribution of used clothing should thus be more tightly controlled.

6. Child labour and its exploitation are flagrant human rights violations which thwart the principles of social justice. While significant progress has been made in the past 20 years in child labour legislation worldwide, and more recently in formal sector enterprises, child labour continues to be a problem in the TCF industries in some countries. Child labour deprives children of an education and the right to childhood. Child labour is a source of unfair competition with negative impacts on employment security and the wages of adult workers.

7. All member States should ratify and fully enforce all relevant international Conventions, in particular the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), and the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138). New awareness campaigns on the issue of child labour should be launched along with drives to promote the universal ratification of these two Conventions. In countries where child labour occurs, governments should earmark additional funds to improve the education system and tighten supervision of compulsory school attendance by children working in the formal and informal sectors. Further, they should - with the ILO's support - take action to: enhance labour education programmes; make labour inspection more effective; use social dialogue to combat child labour; and increase awareness among the public at large.

8. Programmes should be set up within TCF enterprises, with the support of the ILO and the social partners, to prevent the recruitment and employment of children and to make sure that the displaced children are given the opportunity to attend school. To encourage children's school attendance, a range of measures is needed to ensure that family income is maintained. Additionally, these programmes should involve the removal of children from hazardous working conditions and of children below the minimum age as defined in Convention No. 138. These programmes should be conducted in close cooperation with the ILO and its International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC).

9. The majority of workers in TCF industries are women. They are the ones who contribute most actively to the stability of these industries in the long term. In order to secure equal opportunity, governments should facilitate equal access to education, literacy programmes and training, including in traditionally male jobs, and TCF industry employers should enhance their human resource development and training policies, particularly with regard to women. A large number of women workers are in the informal sector and social security funds should be formed for these workers. Employers should strive to ensure access to a broader range of career choices for women through training as well as through the provision of equal opportunities and equal pay for work of equal value. They should ensure access by women workers to all levels of training and various other benefits. Candidates for employment or promotion should be chosen on the basis of skills and ability, not gender. Particular emphasis should be given to facilitating women's opportunities with regard to equal access to skilled jobs.

10. Specific steps should be taken, and suitable mechanisms developed on a tripartite or bipartite basis, to put an end to discriminatory practices, of sexual harassment in particular, which continue to be a problem, despite recent advances in this area. There is a need for special provisions to provide maternity protection and family-friendly policies.

11. Steps should be taken at national and international levels, by governments and social partners, in close cooperation with the ILO, to make the relevant parties more aware of gender issues, provide training on workers' rights, and promote the ratification and full enforcement of relevant international conventions and the decisions taken at international conferences on the topic (Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, 1995, and measures approved by UN Special Session Beijing+5). Women workers, including those from the informal sector, need to have a voice in negotiations at all levels.

12. Migrant workers constitute an important part of the TCF workforce in industrialized countries and those developing countries which have progressed furthest along the road to industrialization. As migrant workers tend to face difficulties because of inappropriate types of education, language difficulties, administrative measures and social integration, they may suffer discriminatory labour practices. It is the responsibility of the social partners, with the support of the competent authorities, to ensure that migrant workers can fully integrate into the activities of TCF enterprises without discrimination and have access to the training necessary for their optimal participation in all production activities. Activities by employers and governments should combat racial and religious discrimination that migrant workers often face. Special language courses should be set up for migrant workers by governments and the social partners to improve access to and completion of training, retraining and education. In accordance with national laws and the provisions of the relevant ILO Conventions, all appropriate measures should be taken to ensure that the special needs of migrant workers are duly taken into consideration.

13. In some parts of the world, the past several years have seen a growth in home work in the TCF industries as markets demand increasing flexibility on the part of enterprises. In many countries, homeworkers, most of whom are women but may also include child workers, enjoy no recognized legal status and, as a result, they are susceptible to a range of abusive labour practices. They thus deserve special attention as well as legal and social protection. Their working conditions are a source of concern to governments and workers' and employers' organizations.

14. Homeworkers should benefit from the full application of all applicable labour laws. Measures are required to bring the wages and conditions of homeworkers into line with other wage earners in the sector; to regulate the responsibilities of intermediaries; to ensure a system of inspection; and to adopt means to elaborate labour statistics on home work.

15. Steps should be taken to strengthen measures to combat clandestine workshops. They represent unfair competition for legally registered enterprises. They subject the workers to intolerable abuses, often practise forced labour, and operate outside the law. The initiatives taken by governments to help to eradicate those illegal production facilities should continue to receive the unconditional support of employers' and workers' organizations and relevant NGOs. Only the law and effective tripartite coordination at the national level, along with public education campaigns, will make it possible to put an end to these activities, which is prejudicial to workers as a whole, and to the public image of the TCF industries. Merchants, retailers and marketers must use their power and responsibility to prevent the use of clandestine work in the production of their products.

16. Appropriate regulatory and promotional measures to eliminate debt bondage should be taken and their application strengthened in countries in which it continues to be practised. The abolition of bonded labour and indentured servitude is one of the priorities of the ILO as set out in the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), together with the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), and the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105). The employers' and workers' organizations of the TCF industries should cooperate with the governments concerned in these efforts.

17. In order to prevent excessively long working hours, the number and schedule of overtime hours worked and payment for overtime should always comply with the provisions of national laws or collective agreements and there should be stricter control of the regulatory measures.

Freedom of association and effective recognition
of the right of collective bargaining

18. As recalled in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-up, 1998, the member States of the ILO have an obligation to respect, promote and realize, in good faith, the rights set out in the fundamental Conventions. The right of freedom of association and collective bargaining should fully apply to the TCF industries. These industries have to follow national laws in order to promote efficient industrial relations systems and further social dialogue. Governments have an important role to play in this regard, notably by creating an institutional framework necessary for social dialogue.

19. Member States should ratify and enforce the relevant international labour standards, in particular the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 (No. 87), and the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98), and promote the strengthening of social dialogue at the appropriate levels. The ILO, in collaboration with the social partners, should support activities aimed at promoting social dialogue in TCF industries, particularly in countries where the framework for such dialogue is not developed.

Collective bargaining can take many different forms and may be based on national, sectoral, enterprise or other forms of agreement. In all countries, workers' representatives should enjoy the freedom to bargain with their employers on salaries and working conditions. The informal sector also needs a voice on these matters.

Setting up a harmonious labour relations system based on the application of the principles of freedom of association and collective bargaining is vital for the economic development of TCF activities in export processing zones and for improving the conditions of workers. The social partners should seek to ensure that the principles embodied in the ILO Declaration are upheld. Governments, in cooperation with the social partners, should ensure that national labour laws and all core ILO Conventions are enforced fully in enterprises in these zones.

22. Voluntary private initiatives, including codes of conduct, can complement existing legislation and encourage the promotion of fundamental principles and rights in the workplace. To be effective they should be based on the core Conventions of the ILO and include effective management systems and objective and transparent verification systems to assure their implementation. These codes can be particularly useful in promoting improvements in workplace labour practices, thereby boosting productivity, quality and competitiveness. Effectively applied in consultation with workers' representatives, voluntary codes of conduct can be an important ingredient in promoting social dialogue.

23. Voluntary private initiatives are still relatively new and much more work needs to be done to encourage a more consistent approach between different codes to prevent confusion.

24. To enhance the effectiveness of training and retraining programmes made necessary by the introduction of new technologies, and to bring the effects of staff reduction to a minimum, cooperation and social dialogue between the social partners should be developed on these issues. Governments should provide quality basic education and, in cooperation with the social partners, institutional training in tune with the changing needs of TCF industries. They should also offer incentives to enterprises to expand initial and continuing training programmes. Special support should be given to small and medium-sized enterprises by their governments.

25. Training and retraining programmes in TCF industries should be designed by all the parties concerned and should prepare workers for change, offer them transferable qualifications, and improve occupational safety and health and working conditions.

26. The ILO should continue to promote its Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-up, the Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy, as well as all relevant ILO Conventions and Recommendations. It should also increase its visibility on an international scale, with its constituents' support.

27. In accordance with the strategic objectives set by the International Labour Conference, the ILO should focus primarily on promoting and strengthening sectoral social dialogue, particularly in TCF industries. ILO activities in the following areas - economic development, the informal sector, the employment impact of technological change, child labour, promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises, training, health and safety, improvement of social protection and women's occupational status, in the overall context of decent work - can bring concrete advantages to TCF industry enterprises and workers. A sectoral approach would reinforce their impact. If appropriate, meetings of experts and regional or subregional meetings to address these issues could be held.

28. The ILO should give priority to concrete means of helping sectoral constituents at national, subregional and regional levels. Priority should also be given to support activities for workers' and employers' organizations and to training programmes, in particular for SMEs. Support should also be given to strengthening labour administrations. Special attention should also be given to the social impact of restructuring and privatization policies in many developing countries, particularly in Africa, and in economies in transition.

29. The ILO should pursue its research programmes on the impact of voluntary codes of conduct in TCF industries, homeworkers, export processing zones and multinational enterprises. It should also develop research projects on the impact of the trade in second-hand clothes on employment and working conditions in TCF industries and undertake a study on the social implications of hours of work.

30. The ILO should build on its capacity to gather and disseminate information and statistics on employment - women's employment, in particular - and on labour practices in TCF industries, including both the formal and informal sectors. Broader use of new communication technologies should make it possible to improve its performance in this area.

31. The ILO has begun to expand its contact and relations with other international institutions which have an impact on economic development. The ILO should seek to enhance these relationships in order to arrive at a more coordinated, rational approach.

1. 1 Throughout this text, when the term "workers' representatives" is used, it refers to Article 3 of the Workers' Representatives Convention, 1971 (No. 135), which reads as follows:

For the purpose of this Convention, the term "workers' representatives" means person who are recognized as such under national law or practice, whether they are: (a) trade union representatives, namely, representatives designated or elected by trade unions or by the members of such unions; or (b) elected representatives, namely, representatives who are freely elected by the workers of the undertaking in accordance with the provisions of national laws or regulations or of collective agreements and whose functions do not include activities which are recognized as the exclusive prerogative of trade unions in the country concerned.

Updated by SP/BR. Approved by JPS/OdVR. Last update: 20 May 2002.

Tripartite Meeting on Labour Practices in the Footwear, Leather, Textiles and Clothing Industries

Geneva, 16-20 October 2000

Conclusions on labour practices in the footwear, leather, textiles and clothing industries

Tripartite Meeting on Labour Practices in the Footwear, Leather,
Textiles and Clothing Industries