Articles, introduction, Vol. 138, No. 2, 1999, - International Labour Review

INTERNATIONAL
LABOUR
REVIEW

VOLUME 138, NUMBER 2 1999/2

INTRODUCTION

There are increasingly numerous signals in the markets for goods, services and finance that purport to convey an image of social responsibility. They take many forms, including brand names that assume a social image as a result of advertising, codes of conduct that are publicized, social labels accorded by NGOs to companies that meet their norms, mutual funds that announce investments only in "socially responsible firms", and so on. They have in common a desire of the seller to increase revenues by appealing to the buyer's social conscience. But in the absence of any common standards, even minimal, of what constitutes social responsibility, neither consumers nor managers are clear as to what is to be expected. Yet such codes and labels have enormous implications, as many of the firms promoting their social image are multinational enterprises locked in battles for market share, and their suppliers can be found across the globe. This difficult topic is taken up by Janelle Diller, who provides an organized review of the diverse "voluntary" initiatives taken by those other than government to signal a social conscience.
Various actors (trade unions, NGOs, business associations, even enlightened managers) are able to use leverage derived from the desire of an enterprise to increase revenues or market share to influence enterprise decision-making in a socially desirable direction. However, the labour content of most codes and labels is limited. As she points out, occupational health and safety and discrimination are found in the majority of codes, but references to the basic principles of freedom of association and collective bargaining are rare. Nevertheless, many do at least refer to international standards, whether general human rights or labour specific. Both promotional and regulatory approaches to the range of private-sector initiatives have been discussed at the international level, involving the United Nations, the Commission of the European Union, the World Bank and, of course, the ILO, and she concludes with observations on their possible implications. In sum, this is an impressive and invaluable overview of a very important and complex issue.
A subject of great concern to both employees and employers is working time. It is relevant around the world and, as Gerhard Bosch points out, time and pay are the two most easily measured aspects of all employment relationships one reason they garner so much attention in comparative studies. But at present, working time is a major point of contention, particularly in western Europe, and not just the duration of the work week but also the organization of working life. In this article, Bosch first explains the various ILO standards on working time and then provides data on many countries, industrialized and developing. Though obviously the long-term trend has been for working time to fall and real wages to rise, that result is only partly due to legislative change and collective bargaining over working time and pay. As he points out, "over the past 100 years, the reduction of working time proved to be not only an element in a policy of redistribution but also, through its effects on work organization and operating hours, an important source of productivity gains and economic growth."
Bosch lays out some of the issues involved in flexible working, including significant differences by sex: it is mainly women who work part time, and men tend to work full time, but the gap in weekly working hours by sex has widened in some countries and narrowed in others. Other issues he takes up in this thoughtful review include the link between educational attainment and economic activity, the impact of the unequal distribution of household work between men and women, incentives presented by tax and social security systems, changes in work organization, collective bargaining, and the oft-debated question of working time and aggregate employment levels. And he concludes with very constructive suggestions on issues needing further analysis: the connection between working time and earnings, the measurement of work actually done under the increasingly flexible arrangements, the effects of new patterns of working time on health and safety, social protection during career breaks and periods of part-time working, accurate information on the conditions in which working time reductions have succeeded and failed, the possible increase in working time as a result of flexible working, statistics on the range of socially necessary work beyond paid work, and the connection between working time, education and training.
While there are some respects in which the developing regions are similar, Latin America is exceptionally urban, and the majority of the workforce is employed as wage labour rather than self-employed. This has implications for the way in which the region is integrated into the world economy and for the effects of globalization on workers. John Weeks considers the extent to which workers have participated in the gains when there have been gains and finds that in only one country has the long-term rate of increase in real wages exceeded the trend in per-capita income. Applying a model to examine the relationship between economic growth, employment and real wages, he shows that in most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the gains from growth were not passed on to workers. This leads him to a critique of the environment in which trade unions have to operate and to a discussion of workers' rights. He argues that in addition to the respect that ought to be accorded core labour rights basic civil and human rights, measures are required to establish acceptable minimum standards at the workplace if the gains from growth are to be equitably shared.
Employment injury schemes are a basic form of social protection against accidents at work and occupational diseases. Given their great importance to workers and the social interest in minimizing these hazards, it is not surprising that such schemes are amongst the first to be adopted. Elaine Fultz and Bodhi Pieris describe their nature and extent in southern Africa. After explaining the main ILO instruments that guide social protection in this area, they analyse current practice in the region which falls substantially short of present obligations and then make suggestions for improvement. Most existing compensation in the region is in the form of individual employer liability, against which the firm obtains insurance or pays a fee to government, though there is a tendency which the authors favour toward social insurance, wherein risks are pooled through a national employment injury fund. This is an informative overview on the present provision of compensation relative to the economies of the region in law and in practice and also a source of encouragement for those who seek to extend this kind of protection to excluded groups and for additional risks.
The perspective in this issue focuses on the social aspects of the follow-up to the Asian financial crisis. While the financial crisis in the region shows signs of ebbing, the levels of unemployment and poverty are still rising and the institutional means of alleviating those social costs are still largely inadequate. There has been substantial fallout in all regions from that crisis and there are many lessons to be drawn. The ILO has been active since the onset of the crisis in promoting dialogue between workers, employers and government that was so sorely lacking before the onset of the crisis, and in providing technical advice on legislative reform and a social safety net, and in other fields of its competence. (The International Labour Review already published one "perspective" on the crisis: see Vol. 137 (1998), No. 1, pp. 81-93.) To take stock of action to date, especially that taken by the ILO, and to guide the next stage, a tripartite symposium was recently held in Geneva; the reporter's conclusions to that symposium are included in this perspective, for they have the virtue of presenting in brief form the priorities as agreed at that international meeting.
The books reviewed and noted here cover some of the major issues of the day. First of all, there is a substantial review of a book that examines the management of large multinational corporations in an era of globalization. Others take up irregular migration, the right to a fair trial, labour relations in a context of economic integration, the social deficit, the relationship of globalization and economic inequality, social security in India, unemployment insurance in the United States, the memoir of Michel Hansenne on his years as Director-General of the ILO and the views of Juan Somavia as expressed over the decade prior to becoming Hansenne's successor at the ILO. Amongst the new ILO publications noted are documents for the International Labour Conference on decent work, child labour and technical cooperation, and other books on employment-intensive infrastructure investment and improving your business.

Updated by MCN. Approved by MFL. Last update: 20 December 1999.