Mr. Thapabutr Jamasevi, Director-General Department of Labour Protection and
Mr. Juan Tan, President of BATU
Ms. Necie Lucero, General Secretary of BATU,
Ladies and Gentlemen, Brothers and Sisters.

I am greatly honoured to be here today and wish to thank you for your kind invitation. I bring you warm greetings from Mr. Juan Somavia, Director-General of the ILO and Mr. Shinichi Hasegawa, Director of the ILO Regional Department for and the Pacific. Special greetings come from Brother Jim Baker, Director of the ILO Workers’ Bureau, who regrets very much that he is not able to be with you today.

They have all asked me to extend their very best wishes for the success of this important meeting. Held every four years, the BATU Asian Regional Conference is a key policy development and decision making platform that will help shape the lives and livelihoods of workers in the region.

This year’s conference has special significance in the context of the unification of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the World Confederation of Labour (WCL) and a number of currently unaffiliated national trade union centres. This is a truly historic step towards achieving one united world trade union international. A single global and united trade union movement, unprecedented both in scale and in strength, would be that much better able to tackle in true solidarity the challenges of globalization.

I understand that the ICFTU and WCL will be holding an extraordinary Congress next year to push towards the unification reality. Since it was only in December last year in that the unification resolutions were adopted, the speed with which these resolutions are being implemented is clear proof of your seriousness and resolve. I wish to congratulate your leaders for their vision and courage and to reiterate the offer of whole hearted support of the ILO in these solidarity and unity efforts. The ILO stands ready to help you implement the unification resolutions.

The ILO itself will also be holding its Asian Regional Meeting this year from the 10-13 October in Busan, . Like your Regional Conference, the ILO Asian Regional Meeting is held every four years. This year, the 14^th ARM will bring together the political, economic and social actors from countries of the region on the theme of Making Decent Work an Asian Goal. Allow me to share with you some of the key issues in this theme of Making Decent Work an Asian Goal – I believe that these issues are also of deep concern to you and are areas for us to work together on.

A main issue is that of productive employment creation. Since the last ARM and also the BATU Congress in 2001, Asian countries have generally recovered well from the financial crisis; recent economic growth has been by far the most rapid in the world. Despite the region’s overall leading performance in the global economy, employment and labour conditions remain major challenges – especially given the huge number of new entrants into the labour force annually, the high incidence of working poverty and labour markets that are increasingly dependent on rapid shifts in global production of goods and services. ’s record of employment creation has failed to match its record of trade and investment openness and economic growth. Unemployment and under-employment have been rising, especially among youth and women. Where there has been growth of employment, much of it has been in the informal economy. For many countries, the job situation has become more serious with the ending of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) on 1 January 2005 . The final phase-out of the MFA has paved the way for seamless global trade, with winners and losers and significant economic and social consequences for Asian countries. Especially in light of the employment-intensive nature of the industry, job losses could be serious. The ILO is therefore planning a Tripartite Meeting in later in the year on Promoting Fair Globalization in Textiles and Clothing in a Post-MFA Environment.

The challenge is not just more jobs but better jobs. The problem in is not just that unemployment, especially among young people, is growing. The problem is that many people are under-employed – they are working and often working very hard and very long hours, but under conditions so poorly paid that they and their families do not even have US$1 a day per person to live on. These are the workers we term the “working poor”. An estimated 767 million or more than two-thirds of the world’s poor live in the Asia-Pacific region, the majority of whom are women. This is why we emphasize gender-sensitive, employment-intensive economic growth as the central element of the decent work agenda and as the principle means of reducing poverty.

In focusing on both more and better jobs, our concern is also with the protection of workers’ safety and health, especially under conditions where rapid globalization may be resulting in intensified and new occupational safety and health hazards – “Decent work must be safe work”. According to ILO estimates, some one million workers are killed annually by work-related accidents and diseases in , not to mention the many more whose exposure to poor working conditions and occupational safety and health hazards affects both their productivity and quality of life.

The issue of labour migration is also key in this region. Labour migration has been over twice the average growth rate of the labour force of the origin countries. The problems are complex in both sending and receiving countries: among them the impact on labour markets and jobs, the growing numbers involved in irregular migration, smuggling and trafficking, the conditions of employment of migrant workers and protection of the basic rights of migrant workers.

Union organizing is another key issue. Thirteen countries in and the Pacific have ratified the Freedom of Association Convention (No.87) and 16 countries have ratified the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention (No.98). But ratification is not the same thing as effective implementation, and we cannot ignore the fact that there are still many cases of violations of this fundamental principle. To deal with such violations, the ILO has been pro-active in terms of helping to promote legal frameworks and national environments where joining and taking part in trade union activities is respected and upheld for what it is – a human right at work and a critical element of economic, social and political progress.

In the Asia-Pacific Region, the ILO has been giving particular attention to assisting trade unions in reaching out to the large and growing numbers of unrepresented informal economy workers – who mainly account for the working poor. Organizing the unorganized is a task the ILO and trade unions have to work closely together on. The ILO has also been focusing on capacity building for workers’ organizations so that they are able to participate more effectively in tripartite policy dialogue at national, local, regional and international levels.

While it has not been possible for me to cover all the issues that will be dealt with at the 14^th Asian Regional Meeting, I hope I have been able to show that we have much to work on together. Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, let me conclude by reaffirming the commitment of the ILO to work closely with the trade union movement to achieve decent work for all workers. Let me on behalf of all my ILO colleagues and on my own behalf wish the BATU XV Congress every success. Thank you.