Engagement with sustainability at the International Labour Organization and wider implications for collective worker voice (original) (raw)
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Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 2021
In global sustainability governance, many actors have emphasised the need for policy integration across the economic, social, and environmental dimensions. In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to advance such integration. But have international organisations responded to this call, and can we observe any integrative effect of the SDGs? We draw on International Relations theories that incorporate change in their analysis and develop an analytical framework to assess change through the lenses of ideas, norms, and institutions. We use this framework to assess sustainability-oriented change in the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The ILO is traditionally an organisation with a primarily socio-economic mandate and hence an ideal case to study whether the SDGs had any impact after 2015 in strengthening the environmental dimension of sustainability in the ILO’s institutional settings and policy development. We focus on the 2010–2019 period and conduct a systematic qualitative content analysis of primary documentary sources, complemented with expert interviews and data on operational developments. The paper concludes that there is a significant yet instrumental greening trend in the ILO’s approach to sustainable development, but also a bidirectional influence between the ILO and the SDGs.
UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, 2020
The meaning of work for individuals and society is evolving and is increasingly linked to sustainability challenges on a global level. For paid work to be meaningful, it has to be ‘decent work’, which has become a central principle in international labor and human rights law. This concept of decent work is an important component of high-profile international initiatives that chart the pathways towards a sustainable future. This Article analyzes and clarifies the evolving meaning of decent work as one of the main objectives of the international labor and human rights discourses and illustrates the increasingly closer connection between decent work and global sustainability instruments and challenges. The United Nations (“UN”) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development incorporates decent work as a central theme of its social pillar. The recently adopted International Labour Organization (“ILO”) Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work further emphasizes the close relation between decent work and sustainability requirements. To get to a more comprehensive understanding of the evolving meaning of ‘decent and sustainable work’, this concept is examined from both a labor law perspective and a human rights law viewpoint. These overlapping but not identical vantage points show that both societal and environmental elements supplement traditional individualized values of work as personal remuneration and fair working conditions. This way, decent work is re-conceptualized to assist in addressing the challenges of creating a socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable future. By tracing the development of decent work and related fundamental labor standards in international human rights law and by inquiring into the core values attached to work from a labor law perspective, we aim to contribute to a better understanding of the deep transition the meaning of work is undergoing, in particular concerning its increasingly closer relation to sustainability challenges. While the modern understanding of decent work for all is firmly embedded in the global sustainability framework, it is argued that in the dynamics of the contemporary globalized economy, it remains important to safeguard its goal of inclusiveness to guarantee a ‘human-centred approach’ in which no vulnerable groups fall outside its scope of protection.
Labour and Environmental Sustainability
Adapt University Press , 2020
Final UK report from the project Agreenment – A Green Mentality for Collective Bargaining, which investigated the role of social dialogue and collective bargaining in promoting sustainable development and the Just Transition to a low-carbon economy in six countries: France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. The project was co-funded by the European Commission, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, under budget heading VP/2017/004 (Grant Agreement VP/2017/004/0037), Improving expertise in the field of industrial relations.
The ILO and the future of work: The politics of global labour policy
In the late 2010s, the future of work gathered attention from the most influential actors in global social governance. The International Labour Organization (ILO), since 2015 and in the context of its Future of Work Initiative, aimed to position itself in the discussion by putting this issue at the centre of their activities for its centenary (2019). The normative and conceptual approach developed by the ILO in this initiative was named the 'human-centred agenda', aimed to align technological change with decent work and social justice. Although preliminary scholarly works have seen these efforts as a humanistic and pro-worker 'countermovement', a deeper analysis of the ideas and interests involved in the Future of Work Initiative reveals a different, more complex picture. This article studies the creation of the humancentred agenda led by the ILO secretariat and the Global Commission on the Future of Work, and how it was further negotiated and modified by the social partners in the making of the Centenary Declaration in 2019. In particular, it shows how business at the ILO and right-wing populist governments, in tandem, reoriented the humancentred agenda towards a pro-employer perspective, thus framing social and labour policy as a tool for adapting the workforce to technological change. It concludes with some reflections about the consequences of these developments for the ILO's position in global governance.
Past and Future Work at the International Labour Organization
International Organizations Law Review, 2020
This article analyses past and future work at the International Labour Organization (‘ILO’) with reference to the transformational analysis offered by Karl Polanyi, examining how constitutional statements made through ILO Declarations reflect countermovement to market dominance. These policy shifts at the ILO are also analysed in relation to the three pillars of sustainability (environmental, economic and social), which arguably map onto Polanyi’s three fictitious commodities (with a focus on labour as emblematic of social concerns). It is argued that the emphasis on social justice and sustainability in the 2019 ILO Global Commission Report, including the proposal for a Universal Labour Guarantee, provides significant resistance to the economic orthodoxy regarding the future of work promoted by the World Bank Group and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (‘OECD’). However, this narrative of ILO countermovement also exposes a lack of balanced regulation which re...
Sustainability as Solidarity Unbound
Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2022
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2015
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Living Standards of the Population in the Regions of Russia, 2021
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