SACTWU (original) (raw)

Interview with Mr. Ebrahim Patel Deputy Member of the Governing Body of the International Labour Organization and Workers' Group spokesperson in the Committee on Employment and Social Policy of the ILO Governing Body. Mr. Patel is General Secretary of the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU), an affiliate of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, COSATU.

Where have we got to with the ILO's Global Employment Agenda?

First, we need to recall the context in which the Global Employment Agenda was conceived. Thus, after the World Summit on Social Development in 1995, the 24th extraordinary session of the United Nations General Assembly, held in June 2000, called upon the ILO to define a coherent and coordinated international strategy in favour of productive, freely chosen employment. This was quite natural. The ILO's commitment to full employment is based on Convention 122 on employment policy, adopted in 1964. But at the time of the UN's call to the ILO, it was clear that the world economy was slowing down, that the world was on the brink of a recession. Everyone also recognized the extent of the unemployment and underemployment problem. So in November 2001, the ILO brought together a World Employment Forum. Its conclusions led to the Global Employment Agenda, whose elements constitute a detailed framework for promoting employment. At the ILO Governing Body session in November 2002, a document was presented to the Committee on Employment and Social Policy, but the Workers' Group felt that this document was not an appropriate response either to the size of the employment problem or to the conclusions of the World Employment Forum, which had pointed to certain problems encountered by developing countries and had sketched out the elements of a response.

Fortunately, it was possible to correct this approach somewhat at the 2003 session of the Governing Body. We now have a document which represents a reasonable compromise and which draws upon the debates in the employment forum, even if some points are still missing or incomplete.

The Committee on Employment and Social Policy does indeed want us to develop the elements of a real global employment agenda. For the Workers' Group, this entails in particular a package of stimuli to ensure that employment creation is at the centre of all economic and social policy, at both world level and national level. We also demand that decent work should be the point of departure for the Global Agenda, and not just a consequence or even a side-effect of increased productivity or growth. All the points of the Agenda must draw their inspiration from this objective of decent work. And the Workers' Group wants the developing countries to be the main beneficiaries of the Agenda. One of the innovative ideas to emerge on this from the Forum was to avoid a «digital divide», an overly large gap between the North and the South in the field of information technology. This won't be achieved by adopting resolutions, but by adopting a sort of Marshall Plan ensuring that the countries of the South receive all the assistance needed in order not to have to pass through all the stages of development. This implies massive investment in human resources development, in education. Another measure with potential direct employment effects would be to write off Third World debt.

Do the employer representatives on this Committee on Employment and Social Policy agree that decent work should be the point of departure?

Right from the start of the Committee's discussions, in November 2001, it was clear that the participants' viewpoints can be very different. Our task is to demonstrate that the employers and governments also stand to benefit from a world economy that works differently. Many employers with good employment practices are pushed out of their markets by unscrupulous competitors who take no account of labour standards, who impose dangerous working conditions, who stop unions from doing their job, and so on. Not everyone agrees on this point, but we're out to convince the doubters.

Is this really a clash between two philosophies - the employers who want a free market and the workers who favour State intervention in the economy and an end to privatizations?

In my experience, nobody really wins a philosophical debate which ends up with one of the two schools of thought having to give in. Rather, we want a series of measures that have an impact on workers' everyday lives. That said, experience shows that the premise that everyone gets natural, automatic positive spin-offs from economic growth is false. Our aim is to prove that capital movements carried out under chaotic conditions will destabilize national economies to the point where nobody benefits - not enterprises, not governments, and still less the workers. In the Committee, the Workers' Group has pointed to the example of the considerable damage suffered by the Asian economies and the immense human suffering that resulted, and also to the large number of firms that closed down during the crisis. We're asking the employers and governments what proposals they have to ensure that it doesn't happen again. We also cite the example of the United States , where overly lax regulation of the financial sector led to the consequences of which we're all aware (the Enron case among others) and where the authorities have at long last resolved to intensify their controls. Whether the rules that they are putting in place are the right ones is a moot point, but in any case the trend is towards recognizing that a lack of regulation leads to this kind of spectacular bankruptcy, with the ensuing vast human and economic costs.

These are the kinds of example that we use in our continuing discussions with the employers and governments, rather than philosophical debating points, although our Committee certainly is influenced by the great currents of world thought. Incidentally, this is not the first time in history that people have called for complete deregulation of the markets. The same calls were heard in the period before the 1929 crash, and the world paid a heavy price for that, notably through the political instability and social injustice that sowed the seeds of a world war. History never repeats itself one hundred per cent, but we are facing the same kind of dilemma at present, and there's a need to ensure appropriate regulation. The market shouldn't be abolished, but neither should it be allowed to override human experience.

The Bretton Woods institutions, amongst others, are criticized for the way they impose neo-liberal policies. Even the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) are sometimes called into question. What is the ILO's role vis-à-vis the World Bank and the IMF?

The PRSPs are supposed to be an improvement on the former structural adjustment programmes. The World Bank emphasizes that there are at least two fundamental differences between these approaches. The first is that the PRSPs have poverty reduction as their primary objective, whereas the top priority used to be economic stabilization. The second is that trade unions and civil society in general are now seen as playing a fundamental role in defining the policies to be put in place by the countries concerned. However, given the way that PRSPs are handled in practice, we increasingly fear a swing back towards the old methods.

The ILO has set up a programme that has brought a sixfold increase in the technical assistance given to countries that are in discussion with the Bretton Woods institutions, and particularly those that are preparing PRSPs. There are two main angles - an ILO approach to the World Bank or the government concerned, asking them to build the notion of «decent work» into their strategies, and a strengthening of the national dialogue between trade unions and employers, along the same lines as at the ILO, whose credibility can make all the difference at that level.

The ILO has selected five countries where it is implementing this reinforced assistance. In Nepal , for example, the ILO has made important proposals concerning the PRSP originally envisaged. These proposals followed a consultation process involving the Ministry of Labour, the employers' associations and the trade unions. However, we need more resources, as around 70 countries are potentially concerned by the PRSPs, and we are covering only five of them. It should also be pointed out that the ILO's technical capacity for the analysis of economic policies has decreased. And yet, if we want to make a significant difference through our involvement with the Bretton Woods institutions, we must be able to produce our own analyses independently. You need economists for that but, curiously enough, the ILO had more such resources at its disposal twenty years ago than it does now, even though there are currently more opportunities to make use of them. We would also like to have greater human and financial means of assisting trade unions in these complex areas, especially in the developing countries.

How come the ILO has fewer resources in this area than twenty years ago?

It seems to me that, over the years, the ILO has shifted its focus mainly to the microeconomic level - to assistance for enterprise development, for instance. That's not a bad idea, but it mustn't be permitted to cloud the macroeconomic vision. However, the present Director-General, Mr. Juan Somavia, does seem to want to strengthen the ILO's capacity in this area. He is convinced of the ILO's potentially significant contribution to the evolution of the world economy. But that will happen only if sufficient resources are allocated.

Interviewers: Mr. Luc Demaret and Mr. Samuel Grumiau, November 2002.