18th ICFTU World Congress - International Labour Organization

International Labour Office
Office of the Director-General
Statements 2004
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Address by Juan Somavia
Director-General of the International Labour Office
to the 18 th ICFTU World Congress
(Miyazaki, Japan, 6 December 2004)
Let me start by saying how pleased I am that the ICFTU is holding its Congress in Japan.
One cannot wish for better hosts than RENGO. President Sasamori and his colleagues have done
a tremendous job in organizing this welcome.
Let me thank President Shamenda for his graceful Presidency and all the ICFTU staff, who make
the Congress run so well.
I must also pay tribute to Sir Roy Trotman and the Worker members of the ILO’s Governing
Body, many of whom, are here. The ICFTU’s voice is respected and influential in our meeting
rooms.
May I add that you are very fortunate to have in Guy Ryder a multicultural General Secretary
who understands the world’s complexities and does not fear to lead.
Dear Delegates,
I come before you as a friend of the trade union movement, also as a brother in the democratic
struggles we have shared together in Latin America and other regions.
***
I feel at home when I am with you. I feel at home with the ICFTU.
But today, as head of the International Labour Organization you are my constituents; I am at your
service.
Let me tell you how proud I am to lead this extraordinary institution.
Thank you for taking me there – thank you for keeping me there.
I believe deeply in the values of our Constitution: labour is not a commodity. Poverty anywhere is
a threat to prosperity everywhere.
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Social justice is the best way to ensure sustainable peace and eradicate poverty. And I believe in
people coming together – organizing, joining forces, making their voices heard.
Freedom of association is essential to sustained progress.
I believe in dialogue, in gender equality and non-discrimination, in fair rules for everyone –
women and men and youth and children – because we all have a stake in each other’s success.
And that is why I believe in tripartism as a key mobilizing tool to make these values a progressive
reality in the life of peoples, working families and communities.
The ILO constituents have a collective responsibility to expand the influence of tripartism in the
era of globalization.
But it all begins with organization and unity.
And I feel so privileged to be here with you when the vision of a new international trade union
confederation is becoming a reality.
I must congratulate the leaders of the ICFTU and the WCL for the decision to move forward and
also, to call on the independent and democratic national trade union centres to become cofounders.
These processes are not easy and you as delegates have a truly historic responsibility in your
hands.
But I am confident that you will emerge as a strong force, an assertive voice, able to secure a
modern representation for working women and men everywhere in the world.
And in the process you will make your own contribution to sustaining and guiding the ILO
through the troubled waters of our uncertain world.
***
The ICFTU’s presence in 152 countries is impressive. Congratulations!
The number of countries where free trade unions can operate safely or affiliate internationally is
growing steadily year by year.
But reaching 100 per cent ratification by ILO member States of Conventions 87 and 98 must
continue to be our goal. I invite you to redouble our efforts.
In many ways, the ICFTU is bigger and more influential than ever before.
Yet, as your starkly frank Congress report states, time and again, the individual members of the
ICFTU face a tough struggle nearly everywhere to maintain or increase their membership.
The ILO and the ICFTU do a lot together – our work on HIV/AIDS at the workplace, child
labour, gender equality, among many other things.
So as you debate the future structure of the international trade union movement, I want to reflect
on three main challenges the ILO faces, together with you, as a tripartite institution: union
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organizing in the 21st century, developing new policy approaches centred on decent work, and
protecting and deepening democracy by struggling for a fair globalization.
***
To start with, perhaps the most fundamental challenge: union organizing.
First, the ILO must be constantly vigilant in defence of the right of freedom of association and
actively promoting it.
As Director-General, I have intervened and will continue to do so on individual cases of trade
unionists, particularly trade union leaders, who are put in jail or otherwise persecuted for trying to
organize workers and carry out their legitimate trade union activities. You can count on me! I am
just a telephone call away!
We are all keeping our eyes open in particularly critical national situations in Belarus, Myanmar,
Colombia and Zimbabwe. As always I have a particular commitment to do what ever we can,
within our mandate, to support the Palestinian workers in the Occupied Territories. I welcome the
presence of Shaher Saed, General Secretary of PGFTU, in these particularly critical moments.
More proactively, we have extensive programmes through our Bureau for Workers’ Activities,
the International Training Centre of the ILO in Turin, and our regular activities to strengthen the
capacity of trade unions.
As you know better than anybody, the letter of the law is one thing, but its respect in practice
needs unions ready and able to assert their rights. In the streets when it is necessary, at the
bargaining table when it is possible.
The laws, and real life in many countries, make exceptions that do not recognize the right of
freedom of association and collective bargaining for all. We see it in the informal economy, in
export processing zones, in sections of the economy, public service, or geographical areas.
Tackling these loopholes is a painstaking process. We must move faster through sound social
dialogue and tripartism. I think we can. In any case, the ILO’s independent Committee of Experts
and the Governing Body Committee on Freedom of Association will always be available.
But what the ILO’s tripartite constituents need to tackle urgently and head-on is the outrageous
idea that a worker in an export processing zone can have fewer rights than other workers in the
same country.
You cannot pretend to build a world-class economy by treating workers as second-class citizens.
And particularly women workers who are the most affected.
I propose that, building on your “Behind the Brands” study, you analyze the situation in every
country with problems in export processing zones preferably, where possible, in a tripartite way
and report to us at the ILO. I would be glad to compile a report with recommendations for action
on the basis of the information from all available sources. Let us commit ourselves to that.
Second, I believe we must help change attitudes to union organizing in many countries and
companies. We have done it in many countries that have asked for our advice.
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We need to keep building a legal, administrative, social and political environment where joining
or taking part in union activities is seen for what it is – a normal, healthy expression of a living
democracy. No worker should ever be forced to choose between their union and their job.
The right to organize is fundamental to justice, to open economies and open societies; to the
legitimacy of free enterprise.
Let us tell it like it is. If you stand opposed to worker rights, you are standing in the way of
democracy. Historically, the fight for worker rights has been a fight for freedom. Anti-union
policies are also anti-democratic.
The starting point for corporate social responsibility must be the readiness of companies to take
an open and constructive attitude to the organization of employees in unions.
With this basic human right respected we can begin to develop dialogue over working conditions,
and other key issues on which consumers, diverse stakeholders, investors and the public at large
judge companies.
And let us not forget, as we remember the Bhopal disaster, that union warnings of modifications
to the plant design, which greatly increased the risk of a major disaster, were ignored in the
months and years before the tragedy.
Third, I believe that the ILO can help in the need to reach out to the massive number of
unrepresented and, in general, poor informal economy workers. Last week we had an event with
the trade unions in Delhi called “Reaching the unreachable”.
Informal workers’ organizations are looking for ways to organize, express and promote the
interests of people who have no levers on economic, social or political power.
Some call themselves unions, some cooperatives, others community organizations, and some may
be workers who aspire to be business people; many are self-employed – but they are all workers
that we should all care about.
Unions are best placed to help them get a foot on the ladder of economic and social security.
I am delighted that the ILO is joining with the ICFTU and the International Cooperative Alliance
in a new initiative on organizing informal economy workers – SYNDICOOP to help them get a
foot on the ladder of economic and social security.
Globalizing Solidarity is a great slogan for the ICFTU. It speaks of an inclusive trade union
movement.
It also speaks of a trade union movement that is open to social forces that are organized on a
different basis to yours: to women’s groups, to human rights activists, to environmentalists and to
social support networks.
As some of you may remember in my speech to you in Brussels in 1996, I said that we needed a
global social movement to build a fairer world.
I can well imagine the development of a strong global social movement organized around decent
work for a fair globalization – a movement where many interdependent agendas converge on
common action, while keeping their identities.
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This movement will only become a sustainable reality if the trade union movement becomes its
organizational backbone. You have the experience and collective wisdom of generations of
struggle.
The Global Unions’ campaign for action against poverty during 2005, which coincides with the
UN review of progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, will win you many allies in
the struggle for decent work for all. You have all my support for this excellent initiative.
***
Turning to the second challenge of new policies, we are facing the need to redefine how we judge
success, what we categorize as successful socio-economic policies.
Today it is basically growth and per capita income.
But today, with jobless growth so prevalent in many countries, developed and developing, these
two statistics are becoming irrelevant from a people’s perspective.
And this is for a very simple reason. Growth with decent work is the natural market process by
which to distribute the wealth created by growth.
It leads to higher consumption, investment and sustainable growth. When you cut the cycle, you
wind up with more income concentration.
So let me propose to you today that we make full employment and decent work creation, as
defined by the ILO, the main criteria for successful policies. In a world in which unemployment,
precarious jobs and the informal economy are growing – it is pure commonsense.
To make that possible we must make decent work a global goal.
This is already beginning to happen politically, but not yet in policy terms.
The Heads of State and Prime Ministers of the Americas, the European Union and the African
Union have endorsed the concept of decent work as a central objective of their own development.
The ILO’s tripartite Asian and Pacific constituency have gone a step further, by asking the ILO to
develop decent work indicators.
But this evolving political consciousness has not yet developed into the practical policy tools to
make it a reality in the workings of the global economy.
To do this, we need a convergence of economic, labour, social, investment and environmental
policies that can promote a more balanced and employment-intensive global growth pattern that
favours all countries.
Experience clearly tells us that such an approach can be successful at the national level. It is based
on an enabling environment for enterprise development, with growing levels of social protection
according to a country’s possibilities, respect for workers’ rights and social dialogue with
tripartism.
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I think that the ILO now has the responsibility to promote this approach internationally and show
how policy coherence can work at the global level.
This is the logical next step along a path we set out on in the Copenhagen Social Summit nearly
ten years ago.
The time is ripe for such an initiative. Responsible democratic politicians in many countries see
that they cannot meet the legitimate demands of voters for decent work within the current policy
framework. They increasingly see the need for a global approach based on sound national
policies.
I would like to invite the ICFTU to join with experts from business, like-minded organizations
and the best economic advisers we can assemble, to deepen our ideas at the ILO about the
relationship between sustainable growth, investment and jobs and on that basis engage in talks
with other institutions.
No single organization can say it has all the answers but by putting our knowledge together within
our mandates with the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and other relevant
bodies, we can certainly come up with better policy coherence.
We must continue to insist that none of their policies result in a weakening of workers’ rights.
And the third challenge, a fair globalization. Presidents Mkapa and Halonen will address this
issue and the General Secretary’s report is admirable.
***
So I will not develop it, but let me say that just last week the significance of the World
Commission’s report for the ILO and our role in the multilateral system was underlined in a UN
General Assembly resolution passed unanimously, which:
“Requests the Secretary-General to take into account, inter alia, the report of the World
Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization in his comprehensive report for the high
level review of 2005 at the 60th Session of the General Assembly, within the follow-up to the
outcome of the Millenium Summit,” and “Invites relevant organizations of the United Nations
system and other relevant multilateral bodies to provide to the Secretary-General information on
their activities to promote an inclusive and equitable globalization.”
We put our faith in the ILO’s methodology of dialogue and were rewarded by an international
community that recognized the usefulness of the balanced approach that is now mainstreamed
into UN activities.
Let me just say that I believe that the present form of globalization is undermining people’s
confidence in democracy. Every politician running for office is faced with the same demand
worldwide: “Give me a fair chance at a decent job”.
It is a demand that cuts across race, religion, gender and age.
And they do not get elected unless they talk about more and better jobs.
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But unemployment and precarious work has continued to grow. So people, who obviously prefer
freedom and liberty, are facing the harsh fact that too many democracies are not delivering for
them.
For the generation who struggled to restore democracy in Latin American in the seventies and
eighties, there is an understandable reaction towards policies that, as the results of a recent
regional opinion poll showed, are causing around three quarters of the people to fear that they
might lose their job in the course of the next year. Worse still, it adds that more than half would
not mind an undemocratic regime if it solved their economic problems.
And here we all feel that the future belongs to Asia. What we do not yet know is how inclusive
Asian societies will be. Will globalization expand social divides or build a bridge between the
haves and have-nots?
These questions are not unique to any society or region. They are pervasive. And they are real.
About 20 per cent of all young women and men are either unemployed or working for a poverty
wage. At a formative stage in their lives, society is saying “there is no place for you”. They
constitute a social explosion already unfolding.
With figures like this it is not surprising that the world’s 188 million migrant workers and their
families, who cannot find work where they were born, would constitute the fifth most populous
country if they all stood under one flag.
Beyond local conflicts and terrorism, widespread unemployment, poverty and human insecurity
are the most pervasive global security risks.
And if democratic governments do not start to focus effectively on this issue soon, it will lead not
just to volatile election results, but to a continuing questioning of democracy itself.
Worse still, the resulting social tensions can also lead to increasingly authoritarian or xenophobic
responses in public opinion and governments themselves.
Nobody is better placed than the ICFTU to get this message across to governments and politicians
in all the countries where you have members.
I am convinced that the new unity that you are forging can inspire democrats everywhere to come
together to safeguard the values they share and preserve the space for dialogue. The most
dangerous hour for democrats is when they forget the importance of listening to each other
beyond their differences.
And international trade union unity can become the bedrock of a democratic renewal that asks the
tough questions like how do we shape a globalization that offers decent work to all? Or what sort
of global governance can make it happen?
In this struggle, I believe the global community of work represented by the tripartite ILO can
respond to this challenge based on our constitutional values and our capacity for consensus
building and looking ahead.
You know that as Director-General you can count on me.
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