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| Frank Hoffer |
Last month, Juan Somavia, the long serving Director-General of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) announced his departure in 2012.
As head of the ILO, he introduced the Decent Work Agenda in 1999 to re-focus the ILO and make it relevant for the 21st century.
Twelve years later, the concept of ‘Decent Work’ is firmly established in the global debate and as an objective of national policy. It appears in many documents of the multilateral system, the G20 and national policy fora. It generates millions of Google hits. It is the subject of much academic research and debate. It is enshrined in several ILO Conventions and Declarations, and the international trade union movement introduced the annual Decent Work Day to campaign for workers’ rights. ‘Decent Work’ is so ubiquitous in ILO documents that some cynics say: "Decent Work is the answer, whatever the question!"
Twelve years later, the concept of ‘Decent Work’ is firmly established in the global debate and as an objective of national policy. It appears in many documents of the multilateral system, the G20 and national policy fora. It generates millions of Google hits. It is the subject of much academic research and debate. It is enshrined in several ILO Conventions and Declarations, and the international trade union movement introduced the annual Decent Work Day to campaign for workers’ rights. ‘Decent Work’ is so ubiquitous in ILO documents that some cynics say: "Decent Work is the answer, whatever the question!"
Will Decent Work survive the departure of the Director-General who coined the term and so successfully marketed it? Should it survive? The answer to the former question is one of the unknowns of “Realpolitik”. The answer to the latter depends on the assessment of what Decent Work means and how it should evolve.
The Decent Work concept recalls the values and commitments of the ILO constitution and the Declaration of Philadelphia in two words. This brevity comes at a price. It broadly expresses a vision about the world of work without explaining how to get there, allowing many people to support it; thus its success as a value statement, as well as its weakness for guiding concrete policy.
Despite its generality, Decent Work is not trivial. It emphasises the importance of work in peoples’ lives, independence and dignity. It gives equal recognition to all workers and underlines work as the source of value creation, rejecting ideological and class-based concepts like entrepreneurship, where the rich single out a specific form of work as superior to others, and implicitly diminishing the contribution of teachers, bricklayers, doctors, waste-pickers, designers or caregivers to wealth creation. Decent Work includes the millions of workers outside the formal economy and demands decent living conditions for all who work, as well as for those who should not work or who cannot find adequate work. It embodies the concept of workers’ rights, social security, quality employment and collective representation of workers.
The early vagueness of the concept can be justified on three accounts. First, developing a comprehensive concept takes time. Second, it should be developed through a broad deliberative process. Finally, the late 1990s saw the high tide of neoliberalism, when any skepticism towards free trade, free markets and the virtues of entrepreneurship was branded as either “loony-left” or as hopelessly old fashioned. The best the world could hope for then was Blairite - third way neoliberalism.
Whatever the reasons, there can be little doubt that the ILO gave priority to promoting Decent Work in the political arena, but underinvested in developing concrete policies to promote its vision. ‘Decent Work 2.0’ has to deliver in this respect, if the concept is to survive.
Times have changed! Unfettered entrepreneurship has ruined our economies, global free capital markets are no longer part of the solution but part of the problem, and the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement shows that people are fed up with a system that demands that 99% of the population work harder to make 1% of it richer.
Reining in financial markets, building a fair trading system, restoring state capacity to tax and provide quality public services as well as limiting socially harmful forms of market power and competition must be key elements of the resurrection of democratic governance.
Democracy will only survive if elected officials can make policy decisions without merely subordinating their people to the Darwinian logic of a global race to the bottom. Instead of improving democratic control on markets, European leaders seemed to be driven by markets and saw no alternative but forcing the Greek prime minister to abandon the idea of giving his people an opportunity to decide the destiny of their country through a democratic referendum. If there “really are no alternatives”, what is the point of having a vote? People, not market power must determine government policy and choices. This requires a global regulatory framework that limits capital freedom and supports sustainable development, social justice and greater equality, respecting and strengthening the policy space for democratic decision making at national level. International Labour Standards (ILS) that address the needs of all working people and that provide a minimum floor of guaranteed substantive social and labour rights is the most important contribution of the ILO to this process.
The recent focus on core labour standards, as defined in the 1998 Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, gave greater visibility and human rights status to the elimination of child labour, forced labour, discrimination and the right to associate freely and bargain collectively. But neoliberalism plus core labour standards falls far short of the initial aspiration of the ILO that labour standards should guarantee substantive minimum levels of protection internationally in order to support the efforts of national labour movements and societies to achieve higher wages, shorter working hours, greater work place security, full employment, industrial democracy, and equality. More urgently, it falls short of what is needed to prevent a potentially deflationary downward spiral of working conditions in today’s crisis.
To this day, the existing framework for labour standard adoption, ratification, implementation and supervision has not delivered the expected results. An open discussion should start on how to overcome the prisoner’s dilemma of the current international labour standard setting mechanism, which has seriously limited its effectiveness: all governments would be better off, if they agree to cooperate, but each country fears a competitive disadvantage if it ratifies first.
The ILO has argued for decades that this fear is unjustified, that standards help to ensure social peace and reduce transaction and information costs in societies. Labour standards contribute to dynamic economic efficiency, the violation of workers’ rights does not result in better trade performance, there is no trade-off between higher expenditure for social protection and economic growth, and countries with liberalised labour markets such as the US or UK are out-competed by countries with higher labour standards like Germany, Sweden, Netherlands or Austria. The Gini coefficient is lower in countries that ensure workers’ rights, and labour market institutions are crucial to reduce inequality and ensure shared productivity gains between capital and labour. In short, the ILO has presented standards as win-win instruments for everybody.
Despite the evidence for the positive or neutral economic impact of well designed labour standards, the ILO has not achieved widespread ratification of its Conventions. It failed to do so because it answered the wrong question. Labour standards are ultimately not contested because of overall economic performance, but rather because of their distributional outcomes and their potential to empower working people.
Labour standards contribute to the common good of social justice, equality and industrial democracy by not allowing for beggar-thy-neighbour policies, providing basic income security and social services to all, limiting the freedom of reckless employers, and depriving them of the pleasure of unlimited power vis-Ã -vis their underlings. Labour standards also change the balance of power in societies. Inevitably, some lose power. Discussing economic efficiency without mentioning power is convenient for consensual policy statements, but fails to address the key factor that determines the application of labour standards: it is not the economy, stupid, but power.
A meaningful debate on the future of standards cannot limit itself to basic human rights on the one hand, and economic efficiency on the other. It needs to say upfront what labour market regulation is primarily about: building inclusive and democratic societies by countering the economic power of capital through legal rights and entitlements of working people. In order to achieve this, core labour standards need to be complemented with substantive positive rights like minimum wage, working time, maternity protection and social security.
The ILO is not leading the intellectual and conceptual debate on the future of labour standards. Nor is it providing sufficient innovative ideas to ensure that labour standards fulfill their purpose. Maintaining the existing supervisory machinery is important, but not enough. Some simple steps to improve effectiveness could be:
- Obligatory, regular public hearings in non-ratifying countries with parliamentarians from ratifying countries to promote ratification;
- consolidation and modernisation of existing labour standards without undermining existing levels of protection
- financial obligations for governments that fail to consider ratification or implementation of conventions;
- a global fund to help governments ratify and implement labour standards;
- assessing the policy advice of other international organisations and government policies against the objective of social justice as defined through labour standards;
- measuring Decent Work and providing internationally comparable country data about progress in levels of social protection and labour rights; and
- a Decent Work label for countries that have ratified and implemented an internationally agreed package of relevant labour standards
Markets need to be governed; otherwise they govern us. The need for international rules and safeguards is more apparent than ever after the visible disaster of the belief in the invisible hand. Realizing the potential of ILS is the challenging task and opportunity of Decent Work 2.0. The vision requires effective universal rules and standards to become a reality.
The ‘cautious realists’ maintain that this dream, in today’s world, is unrealistic. For the conservative Utopians of the permanent status quo, change never has a chance. But if the future of Decent Work is the question, cautious realism is not the answer.
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Frank Hoffer is senior research officer at the Bureau for Workers' Activities of the ILO. He writes in his personal capacity.
4 Comments:
Thanks for this intervention Frank.
A key insight for me is that "Labour standards are ultimately not contested
because of overall economic performance, but rather because of their
distributional outcomes and their potential to empower working people."
Capital cannot abide a limit. Any limit.
This really gets us to the point about power. Trade unionists, researchers
& academics have spent so much of our time trying to shape and influence
debates about the impact of minimum standards using 'logic and reason' in
terms of economic impacts. The limits of highly effective and articulate
'logic and reason' are reached as soon as we bring this discussion of power
into the debate. For me this compels us to re-focus more of our limited
resources on building independent power and capacity rather than (while not
abandoning!) 'logic and reason'..."
Thanks, Frank. I basically agree with your comments, except the 'Darwinian' analogy. Darwin would never have endorsed the current situation since it clearly does not lead to the survival of the fittest but the destruction of all options that would make the planet more fit for people.
However, of the 'Occupy Wall Street (etc.)'movements, two things:
1. They are often accused of not having a clear agenda. Unfair. If someone is bashing me with a baseball bat, I have every right to shout 'Stop!' without having any obligation to suggest whatever else he/she should do instead.
2. Further, this implies that those who support the status quo in some way or another agree on what we should do to fix the broken economy/society. Do they? Do all economists agree? Do farmers agree with manufacturers and/or with service providers? Do urban elites agree with rural elites? Do developing economy/country leaders agree with developed economy/country leaders? Why should we demand that all critics of the present system should agree, other than that what is being foisted on us at present is unacceptable?
Mike Waghorne
Dear Mike,
Yes, the defenders of the status quo have not really a convincing answer.
Currently despite all summit diplomacy competitive national strategies clearly supersede multilateral leave alone global solutions. Within a competitive strategy losses and destruction still count as success as long as competitors are hid harder and ultimately pushed out of business. As long as ”creative destruction” means that individual enterprises go out of business, while others flourish, the Darwian analogy of survival of the fittest applies. However, I agree with you that this analogy becomes wrong, when entire nations are concerned as it is simply impossible to close a nation and start a new one.
It seems an irony of history that the key demands France, Britain and the US imposes on the Weimar Republic in the 1930 Young plan were
1. No debt forgiveness, and insistence of debt repayment until 1988
2.Stricht anti-inflationary policies and a balanced budget
3. Prohibition of any devaluation of the Reichsmark
Sounds like the current German policy vis-Ã -vis the deficit countries in the Euro zone. It did not work in 1930 and will not work in 2011.
The historic perspective shows the level of irresponsibility and ignorance. They seem to take overall stability for granted whatever hardship is imposed on people.
I believe the decent work concept should survive as a primary ILO principle. First, the “right to decent work” is an improvement on the “right to work”, a concept that has been widely misused. A right to decent treatment has been internationally recognised for some time. For example, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UN) says that conditions of work should ensure “a decent living for [all workers] and their families”. (That is a reminder of the slogan of “decent work for a decent life” that has been used for global union campaigning). At the ILO, the landmark World Employment Conference, in 1976, called in its Declaration of Principles for “la realisation du plein emploi productif dans des conditions de travail décentes”. (Sorry, I can’t find my English text.) I admit that as a slogan, I prefer “Jobs with Justice” to “decent work”, and in protest letters I often use another concept found in the International Covenant; namely that of “just and favourable conditions of work”, with its implications of greater equality and a fair sharing of economic growth and greater productivity.
Frank refers to international labour standards as the ILO’s most important contribution to sustainable development, etc. That isn’t the impression given by the homepage of the ILO’s web site, or ILO media releases. On the latter point, the ILO has done better in the past, as in recent times there has been no media release on the report of the Committee of Experts, and little on the work of the Conference Committee or on the cases before the Committee on Freedom of Association. The ILO has done well to heighten its profile on economic issues and gain acceptance at the G-20, etc. But that shouldn’t come at the expense of another of its core activities.
The Committee of Experts could pay some attention to the distribution of ratifications among ILO Member States, which could lead to comments by the Conference Committee.
One of Frank’s proposals is “financial obligations for governments that fail to consider ratification or implementation of conventions”. I reacted rather negatively to a similar proposal made by Frank in his earlier GLC Column on this subject. I have reconsidered that position. The governments of ILO Members that do ratify Conventions face significant direct costs derived from their reporting obligations. That puts them at a disadvantage to ILO Members that ratify hardly any or fewer Conventions. True, on ratification, Members derive the legal privilege of being able to file complaints against Members that have ratified the same Convention. But, in return, they face the risk of being complained against. So, to rectify the cost imbalance, it would be right for non- or less-ratifying Members to make an additional payment to the ILO, a compensation that would be paid also by Members that ratify but don’t report in a timely fashion or engage in serious or persistent violations, as found by the Committee of Experts. Some of the revenue received by the ILO would be used to help poorer Members fulfil the reporting and implementation obligations flowing from their ratifications.
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