Annex III: Closing session
Statement on behalf of the ministries of labour
by
Mr Ying Lun Fung
The Honourable Ms Horiuchi, The Honourable Mr Ishida, Distinguished resource persons, Ladies and gentlemen,
It is my great honour to represent Government representatives of the Ministries responsible for labour to deliver our concluding statements. First of all, I would like to thank Ms Horiuchi and the ILO for organizing such a meaning conference, so that we can have a forum to exchange views with our social partners on the important issues of human resource management, corporate citizenship and small business development.
I also wish to thank all the learned resource persons who have shared with us their invaluable experience and offered us excellent assistance in our deliberation and presentations; and the Chairman of various technical sessions, whose excellent efforts have made the preparation of the Statement of Common Understanding possible.
Last but not the least, I must express my sincere appreciation to the Secretariat and everyone responsible for logistics. They have enabled the conference to proceed smoothly and made our stay in Thailand pleasant.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Globalization coupled with the Asian economic crisis have given us new challenges and opportunities. How can we bring our economy back to recovery, how should we tackle the problem of high employment and its negative social consequences, and how can we ensure social equity while pursuing economic growth? These are challenges which all of us are facing today. On the other hand, we also see opportunities to review our political, social and economic systems and identify the weaknesses therein; to cooperate with social partners and broader society, and most importantly to make necessary adjustments to the existing systems such that we can emerge even more robust and competitive than ever before.
In the past two and a half days, we have shared the experience of experts and had brain-storming sessions among ourselves on the improvement of human resource management practices, the promotion of corporate citizenship and the development of the employment potential of small business. These are all critical measures to help us meet our challenges.
I am sure each of us will bring home new ideas of how to address those issues. We in the Government consider that our major role is to create an environment conducive to economic growth and social development. We would strive to remove red-tapes and provide supporting services for the development of enterprises, good human resource management practices and corporate citizenship. In this respect, Governments play the role of facilitator, motivator and catalyst.
In the area of human resource management, we are committed to promoting effective labour-management communication, joint consultation and voluntary negotiation at the enterprise levels. At the industrial level and national level, we would promote and facilitate the establishment of tripartite consultation mechanisms. In this respect, we consider it important for the Government to provide employers, employees and their respective associations with guidelines and information on best practices, and give them logistical supports wherever necessary and practicable.
As regards human resource development we are of the view that a long term strategy regarding education and training must be developed. The strategy should focus on the development of competent individuals with market oriented skills. It should incorporate life-long learning and retraining schemes which enable employees to cope with the changing demand of the labour market.
The Government=s role is to provide an overall policy and system framework for training, and ensure the quality for skills standards and training providers. Government should also collaborate with social partners to identify the labour market changes and skill requirements.
Ladies and gentlemen,
In a civil society we must help individuals who are least capable of helping themselves. In the wake of the economic crisis, the unemployment and under employment rate in this region has dramatically increased. Governments should therefore, carefully review and improve where necessary their social security systems with a view to providing an effective safety net for those affected.
We must also note that different nations are in different stages of political, economic and social development. In formulating its economic and social policies, each nation should take account of its national conditions.
Finally I wish to reiterate one message which has reverberated loud and clear in this conference, i.e. the need for Governments, private enterprises, employers= associations, workers= organizations and other civil partners to collaborate in various labour, economic and social issues. It is only through such partnership that long-term economic and social development can be sustained.
We look forward to the continual cooperation with our social partners at the national and international levels.
Thank you.
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Statement on behalf of the ministries
responsible for enterprise development
by
Mr S. Talwar
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Governments are to-day mostly performing the role of a facilitator and monitoring rather than of a regulator. There is a greater emphasis on economic reforms, liberalisation and deregulation.
Corporate houses, i.e. big industrial groups, SMEs and State owned Enterprises are being encouraged to adopt new management practices for Human Resource Management. The focus of HRM should be to create an environment and work culture wherein there is identification of mutuality of interest between the employees and enterprise and undeterred commitment towards all stakeholders.
In Corporate Citizenship Activities or CCA, government provides inputs by establishing sound practices through SOEs to achieve its socio-economic objectives and by extending social benefits like housing, educational, medical and health care, including hospitals, etc. There are also instances of corporate houses contributing to enterprise development and societal partnership through community related activities. It is increasingly being recognised by industry that the community at large is the ultimate stakeholder in any enterprise and that the islands of prosperity can not survive in the midst of grinding poverty. Many corporate houses are undertaking welfare activities for improving the quality of life of the local community. These practices need to be replicated by others too.
SMEs have acquired a vital place in the socio-economic development of most of the countries of the region due to their employment generating potential. Their relevance becomes all the more significant in present economic scenario, when liberalisation, privatisation and globalization are resulting in shrinkage of employment opportunities.
The government policies and initiatives like duty and tax concessions, priority sector lending, financial subsidies and grants, support for modernisation and quality upgradation, training facilities for skill development, etc., serve as incentives to the entrepreneurs to set up SMEs.
The governments need to intensify programmes of integrated infrastructural development for providing facilities like power, water, communication, etc., and entrepreneurship development, which could facilitate setting up of Small Scale Industries and generate self-employment opportunities in tiny and micro-enterprises.
SMEs due to their inherent resource constraints are unable to pursue regular R&D activities, gain access to latest technological developments and lack market-information. These very often serve as impediment in developing linkages with large industrial houses. It is in this back drop that the ILO can play a catalytic role by organising SME Business Development Programmes, maintain data-base for latest technological developments and market information to which SMEs could have easy access. Training programmes could be organized on regional basis.
I would like to avail this opportunity to suggest that ILO may organize a workshop or round table on privatization, its impact on work force and strategies to protect interest of the work force.
The future must bring a greater commitment of industry, workers group and society working together with active support of government to cure some of the social ills that are facing the region today. It is extremely desired that a balance is stuck between preserving the private enterprise system and ensuring that business acts responsibly for betterment of all concerned. The most important obligations are maintaining good community relations, humanization approach, obligation to the consumer which includes all individuals, groups and companies and improving ethical conduct. Increased attention needs to be placed on massive retraining programmes for upgrading the quality of human resources and employment generation.
Last but not the least, on behalf of Government representatives I would like to thank the ILO for this opportunity. I am confident that the deliberation of this round table will go a long way in benefiting all in development of HRM, CCA & SMEs in the future.
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Statement on behalf of the employers
by
Dr Steven Kates
Thank you Mr Chairman.
Let me begin by thanking the ILO for organizing and hosting this meeting. Globalization is a fact of life but is often only thought of in terms of the free flow of goods and services. At this meeting we have seen another dimension which is the free flow of ideas across borders.
The meeting has dealt with issues which are central to improving the living standards of workers and their families across the world. We have been considering ways in which we can improve, through better national and international institutions, the way in which we conduct our affairs.
The first issue was Human Resources Management which is a piece of jargon which basically means how we can ensure that workers are productive within their own places of work but also that those places of work are managed in a way in which the potential for each employee is enhanced to the greatest extent possible consistent with the goals of the enterprise.
We have been considering the way in which training and education, career development, equitable pay systems can contribute to the personal goals of workers and the organizational goals of management. We are trying to produce a better world in which we can all enjoy rising prosperity and greater personal freedom.
As part of this effort, we have discussed good corporate citizenship. It is my own experience working with employers that their aims have been to exceed basic legislative requirements and that being good corporate citizens is part of their own philosophy of life.
The excellent and admirable example provided by Mr Teteishi is an outstanding example of what is a not unusual experience amongst many employers.
The last of the issues we dealt with was small business in relation to quality, but also, and I believe very importantly, the issue of gender equity.
Half the world, and half the world=s ability and talents, are found amongst women. In purely economic terms it is inefficient to exclude so much ability from being able to contribute to world productivity.
But the issues go well beyond questions of productivity and extend to the personal aspirations of women so that they are not excluded from any area of human endeavour. It is now recognized that women should be encouraged to participate in all areas and this meeting has helped promote this extraordinarily important objective.
And as we discussed, part of the very concept of gender equity is the leadership role of women not just in the labour market but as entrepreneurs owning their own businesses as well as managing businesses owned by others.
In closing I would like to thank the ILO Secretariat for their work in organizing this meeting. The preparation of the agenda and the smooth running of the conference is entirely due to their efforts. We have all at different times had to organize our own meetings so that we all know how difficult it is. We would therefore like to congratulate the Secretariat for a job well done.
I would also like to thank my colleagues on the employer side of the house for their cooperation and assistance and also Mr Chacko and Mr Crowe for their advice on a number of very delicate issues. Their assistance has been invaluable.
And lastly, I would like to thank our colleagues on the other side of the house. Without the cooperation of the union delegates, the achievement of agreed texts for the three documents before the meeting could not have been achieved and I thank them for it.
We now look forward to the further development of these issues at other forums within the ILO but we on the employer side hope that the texts we have helped develop will be used to further develop policies which can create the prosperity and freedom which the ILO was designed to promote.
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Statement on behalf of the workers
by
Mr Abdul Halim Mansor
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The three day seminar under the theme ARole of Enterprises and Society Partnerships@ from 22 to 24 September 1999 organized by the Regional Office of ILO at Bangkok has been an extremely interesting and productive seminar from the perspective of the workers group. We wish to congratulate the secretariat at ILO Bangkok for the excellent programme put together by them, the ever ready assistance given by the professionals within the ILO not only from Bangkok but also from Manila and Geneva and in particular the enthusiasm shown by both the Regional Director, Ms Mitsuko Horiuchi and her Deputy Mr. Reuben Dudley; the administrative staff manning the secretariat and rendering all forms of assistance is deeply appreciated by the workers group.
The workers group wish to congratulate all the paper writers, both presented as well as the country reports and the resource persons - the combined input in the technical and special sessions were very thought provoking and useful.
The chairpersons of the various sessions did a good job to conduct the sessions professionally and to summarise the working group deliberations in a nutshell. Their efforts successfully crystallized the various thoughts and ideas put forward by the enthusiastic participants.
The methodology of the seminar in the form of technical and open sessions, working group sessions compels all participants to focus on the topic at hand and share our thoughts and ideas in those areas for the benefit of society.
The workers group returns some enriched by the tremendous learning experience here as well as happy to have contributed usefully to the deliberations.
Having said that, it is my pleasure to inform you, that the reports from of the different session have been fully endorsed by the representatives of the workers= organizations in this meeting. The common understandings are the result of long deliberations among the chairpersons of the different groups. Sometimes they had to spend long time in order to reach a common understanding.
Frankly speaking, there was some concern in our group when we looked at the negotiated texts. Some texts spoke only about workers and not about their trade union organizations and the role these organizations can and should play in human resource management and human resource development. However, on a very last moment, some changes have been made. I wish to thank the employers= delegation for its cooperation in this respect.
We, indeed, think that workers= organization can play an important role in human resource development. Both on enterprise, industry and national level. And I think it is in the interest of all partners that trade union organizations are involved.
The SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, a publication on technology and business economics, in its edition of August 1998, concludes - on the basis of research of data collected from more than 1,500 workplaces - that the positive change in labour productivity in unionized workplaces is almost double compared to non-unionized workplaces. The same study said that the change in labour productivity is considerably negative in workplaces where the workers or their organization was not involved.
It may be interesting for future discussion in the ILO that the office pulls the results of this and similar studies together as resource material.
I thank you all, in particular you Ms Horiuchi for providing us with this excellent opportunity to discuss very important issues which, unfortunately, are not getting the highest priority in our day-to-day work. This meeting, and its results, will certainly support a higher priority of human resource development and management on the trade union agenda.
Thank you very much.
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Remarks by
Mr Masaru Ishida
Director
ILO Enterprise and Cooperative Development Department
Distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen,
I would now like to make some brief remarks on the three-day Asian and Pacific Regional Round Table Meeting on "Roles of Enterprises and Society Partnerships".
First of all, I was most impressed by your great enthusiasm and your hard work in discussing the roles that enterprises are expected to play for society in the course of recovery from the economic crisis and for future economic and social development. We have learned a lot of lessons throughout all of the sessions. I found the case studies and special open sessions very interesting and effective in the learning process together with the in-depth discussions on the subjects outlined in the overview paper. I am sure that the whole learning process will be useful in guiding our future work on policy development with regard to enterprises and society partnerships at the national, institutional and enterprise levels.
The ILO plans to organize the Second ILO Enterprise Forum in Geneva on 5-6 November 1999 to discuss these same subjects at the international level. We shall take full advantage of the output of this meeting, and input it into the global forum so that what we have discussed here can be utilized for policy development at the global level.
The Asian and Pacific region has witnessed the most dramatic experiences in globalization, i.e. such great, spectacular economic growth over the past two decades coupled with such a sudden economic crisis over recent years. And now we expect to see the same kind of dramatic recovery and development.
Over the past three days we have discussed a number of enterprise issues in connection with crisis management. This regional experience needs to be fully shared by policy makers around the world, and new methods of globalization need to be explored based upon the lessons learned by the Asian and Pacific region for better management of globalization during the next millennium.
I hope the new millennium will be much better than the present one. It is our hope that we shall continue to think and work together for the sake of more balanced economic and social development in the future.
I should like to take this opportunity to express our hearty thanks for your great contribution to this fruitful and successful meeting. I would also like to say a special word of thanks to Mrs. Horiuchi and our colleagues from the Regional Office for their most efficient administrative help and support in organizing and implementing this important meeting so successfully. Special thanks must also go to the ENTREPRISE MDT Specialists in the region for their technical inputs, and particularly to Mr. Max Iacono for his special contribution to the excellent overview paper that kicked off and stimulated the whole discussion process.
I wish you all every success in the work that awaits you when you get back to your respective countries, and "bon voyage"!
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Closing Remarks by
Ms Mitsuko Horiuchi
Regional Director
Asia Pacific Region
Distinguished Representatives of Governments, Employers’ and Workers’ Organizations, Resource Persons, Entrepreneurs,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me begin by congratulating you on your valuable work at this Meeting, which has seen a fertile exchange of experiences and ideas concerning enterprise and society partnerships.
Our tripartite constituents were enriched by the presence of representatives from ministries of industry and enterprise development. The contributions you made, in the technical sessions, group work and in the preparation of statements of common understanding sharpened our understanding of the critical issues in the three key areas of human resource management, corporate citizenship and the employment potential of small businesses.
For the ILO, enterprise promotion is a decisive feature of our core concern: putting people to work, by which I of course mean "decent" work. The aim, plainly, is not only to produce viable, sustainable enterprises but also to raise living standards and permit personal fulfilment.
You have shown us a considerable variety of approaches to enterprise promotion. The initiatives you have described, be they governments’, employers’ or workers’, have captured our attention and fired our imagination. Is it any wonder then that you succeeded in forging partnerships where before people had to go it alone? As we heard earlier this morning, the working groups achieved a common understanding on each of the three technical topics.
As to human resources management, you acknowledged that people are the key to sustainable, competitive enterprises. Today’s changing business environment and mounting competition for a place in global markets has taught managers to rely on human resources for the flexibility and innovative qualities that can make their enterprises winners.
The interests employees and employers have in common are also shared with their main stakeholders, which include suppliers, investors and customers. It takes harmonious labour relations to develop and maintain successful partnerships and these, as we know, always rest on open and effective lines of communication.
There must also be continuing programmes to upgrade the skills of managers and workers alike.
You recognize that the virtually unending restructuring prompted by the need to maintain flexibility and competitiveness poses very special challenges. Retrenchment and redundancies have become a reality. But they can succeed and proceed only on the basis of consultation and participation.
These are the essential components of effective human resources management.
Your deliberations on corporate citizenship identified a range of driving forces behind the innovations we are seeing in this area. Though legislation sets minimal rules governing corporate behaviour, it makes good business sense to pursue a socially oriented competitive strategy.
A brand name and corporate image can be a company’s most valuable asset. It is also a vulnerable asset, which is under constant scrutiny on the part of consumers and lobby groups whose access to information and ability to spread it are growing every day thanks to modern telecommunications.
Corporate citizenship may not improve business in the short term, you urge employers and management to rise to the occasion by involving every employee at every level in a programme of corporate citizenship that rallies the support of all stakeholders.
You called on constituents to support broader application of citizenship measures. Governments can help by calling attention to outstanding citizenship achievement areas and making it easier to exchange information on good-practice initiatives. They can also offer tax breaks and stimulate dialogue between the social partners and others concerned.
Employers and workers can promote citizenship values and work to increase capacity in their organizations to the benefit long-term partnerships.
Small and medium enterprise development is central to employment creation. You want this employment potential tapped not just for more jobs, but also for quality jobs quality in terms of safety and health, wages and social protection.
You drew particular attention to the challenges facing women entrepreneurs and women employed in SMEs.
The policy and regulatory environment is of utmost importance to SME promotion. In many cases rules should be simpler to let SMEs move ahead unhindered.
Government services and procedures can be administered through "one-stop shops" that make it easier to access information and facilities. ILO Recommendation 189, you point out, offers helpful guidance on this.
You see employers’ and workers’ organizations contributing by spelling out the needs and concerns of the SME sector with policy makers. Larger enterprises too, you observe, can help develop SMEs and you recommend a range of business development services.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The results of this Round Table will be put to the Second ILO Enterprise Forum in Geneva on 5 and 6 of November of this year. They will make a practical difference to that Forum. They will also be a part of the follow-up to the Social Summit, which relies on enterprises as an important element to fulfil its commitments.
As Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, I can assure you that your suggestions will provide valuable guidance as we develop our various programmes in pursuit of the ILO’s strategic objectives.
There are many welcome signs of recovery from the Asian crisis. But to stave off future crises Asia needs competitive and sustainable enterprises with social justice. Your cooperation and work will help limit the risks of another crisis.
I would like to pay tribute to the Employers’ and Workers’ spokespersons, Mr. Steven Kates and Mr. Abdul Halim Mansor and to the several Government representatives, who have in their different, yet basically common, expressions conveyed the view that enterprise development, employment generation and social protection are shared concerns and responsibilities.
I also wish to thank the many people in this room and outside it who helped to make this Round Table a success. Particularly, my thanks to Mr Ishida, Director, ENTREPRISE, and his colleagues from the Department and Specialists in the region, as well as to the employers’ and workers’ officials from Headquarters and the region, whose valuable inputs have helped us immensely. Behind the scenes, my staff in the Regional Department, as always, have supported this meeting most capably. My thanks to you.
It is fitting to close this meeting with a vision of business in the 21st century. It was articulated by our distinguished guest speaker, Mr Tateisi, who foresees a new management style characterized by:
- industrial relations emphasizing human values;
- a balance between efficiency and creativity;
- the pursuit of social goals as vigorously as profit; and lastly
- concern for community and the global environment.
I thank you all for participating so actively in this Round Table and wish those of you travelling back home a safe journey.
Updated by TN. Approved by BW. Last update: 31 May 2000.