Can the future of work be uncoupled from productive development?

Guillermo Zuccotti

As the International Labour Organisation (ILO) prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary, the debate is underway as to the future of work.

When we, the workers, are called on to discuss this issue in light of the current global context, our minds turn to the social value of a return to work as a driver of upward social mobility, something that must be advocated on the world stage.

The crisis of the Welfare State
The crisis in social welfare of the 1970s, which was marked by changes in production patterns, gave rise to explanations of the crisis in work – and in particular waged work (Gorz 1982, Fitoussi and Rosanvallon 1997) – that at the extreme predicted the end of work (Rifkin 1996), arguments that guided the thinking of international organisations such as the IMF and World Bank on this subject.

And so the world continued its relentless march towards a second best in terms of the quality of human work and the associated labour rights standards. Evidence of this can be found in the institutionalisation of informal labour as a form of production and source of labour. This informality was also responsible for the phenomenal increase and concentration of profits in the hands of a few, oligopolising the structure of the markets in our countries.

A year of Brexit: trade union perspectives

Owen Tudor

The United Kingdom (UK) voted to leave the European Union (EU) on 23 June 2016. Since then, the government has been forced by the Supreme Court to obtain Parliament’s permission to initiate the Article 50 process to leave the EU, subsequently issuing the appropriate letter to the European Commission. Negotiations only commenced on 19 June, almost a year after the referendum, and no agreements have yet been reached. The government has introduced the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, designed to copy EU law into UK law before leaving the EU, which is due to happen, under the Article 50 process, by late March 2019. 

The Trade Union Congress (TUC), with most of Britain’s largest unions, campaigned to stay in the EU[1] on the grounds that leaving risked workers’ rights and decent jobs. A legal opinion setting out the risk to workers’ rights (Ford, 2016) from a leading employment lawyer, Michael Ford, was published ahead of the referendum, as well as a TUC analysis of the effect on jobs and wages (TUC, 2016a). 

According to TUC opinion polling immediately after the referendum, 60% of trade unionists voted to remain in the EU, but much larger proportions, including majorities among leave voters, wished to see EU employment laws retained after leaving, and opposed further cuts in government spending to address the economic challenges of leaving. The referendum result was strongly connected to a desire to punish the establishment, together with concerns about the effect of immigration. Generally, older voters, politically conservative voters, and those without qualifications beyond compulsory school were most likely to vote to leave (GQRR, 2016).[2]

At What Level Should a National Minimum Wage in South Africa be Fixed?

Eddie Cottle

The struggle for a National Minimum Wage (NMW) in South Africa has a long history, having been waged, largely by organised worker formations, since the 1930s. These efforts have taken various forms from open class conflict, to more subdued trade union representations, to the various governments of the day. Most of these representations by the labour movement to government were made for the introduction of a NMW system that would enforce a minimum wage across all industries in the country.

To date, no NMW has been set. It is only after the Marikana Massacre and the farm workers’ revolt of 2012, that the post-apartheid African National Congress (ANC)-led government has decided to the introduction of a NMW, initially through agreeing to an investigation. The content of the various reports of the task teams involved in the investigation have not been made public, and the rank-and-file members of the trade unions have not been involved in democratic processes to decide where the NMW should be set.

Reflections on the Fair Food Agreement between the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and retail multinational Ahold

Karin Astrid Siegmann

Ahold signs on to a programme for farmworkers’ labour rights
On the 29th of July 2015, the Dutch retailer Ahold announced a historic agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a migrant farmworkers’ organisation in Florida’s tomato fields. Being signatory of the CIW’s Fair Food Program (FFP) implies the following: Ahold-USA commits to a wage premium in its supply chain in the form of a ‘penny per pound’ of harvested tomatoes, compliance with the Fair Food Code of Conduct, the provision of worker-to-worker education sessions, a worker-triggered complaint resolution mechanism, as well as the establishment of health and safety committees on every participating farm.

The retailer’s participation represents a quantum leap towards decent work for workers who are disadvantaged relative to most other US wage and salary workers on the basis of their poverty, occupational hazards, their vulnerability to unemployment and their irregular immigration status (Kandel 2008). 

The agreement marks a U-turn for Ahold. Since 2010, the company had responded to the CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food with a ‘slow NO’. During shareholder meetings and in public statements, the retailer had denied responsibility for farmworker wages in their suppliers’ fields, arguing that enforcement of labour standards is the duty of US public bodies. In addition, it maintained that its own Standards of Engagement for suppliers were sufficient to guarantee fair and dignified working conditions in its supply chain, and that it already sources from growers who participate in the FFP - without disclosing, though, who those tomato growers are.

Yes, we did it! Domestic Workers Launch an International Federation

Chris Bonner

Barbro Budin

Karin Pape

“Yes we did it!”[1], a statement that best captures the jubilant mood on the last day of the Founding Congress of the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) in 2013. It is also the title of a new book launched at that Congress, which tells the story of how domestic workers organised to win the Domestic Workers Convention, C189, at the International Labour Conference (ILC) of the ILO on 16 June 2011. 

Just over two years later, domestic workers have done it again. Another milestone has been achieved through the formation of a fully constituted, democratic federation of 48 membership-based domestic workers’ organisations representing around 300 000 domestic workers globally. This will ensure that the Convention is not forgotten, and that the struggle for “decent work for domestic workers’ continues in a coordinated and sustained manner.

The launching of the IDWF has wider implications because it marks an important moment in the history of the Labour Movement. For the first time a global union organisation has been formed by women from the poorest sections of society, with an all-women elected leadership. The transformation from a network to a global federation was decided upon by representatives of 48 domestic workers’ organisations, from 42 countries.

“We need to back that Dialogue with some Action” – Programme and Practice of Decent Work in Ghana

Joyce Abebrese

The rise of globalisation and economic growth, evolving throughout the last decades, brought about several forms of inequality and injustice among and within the different countries of the world. Not all economic growth can be assigned to decent and productive employment for the people, since it has not led to a reduction of poverty and informal labour (International Labour Organisation (ILO) 1999). Developing countries, in particular, struggle because they often lack efficient social security and social protection systems to care for the unemployed, diseased and vulnerable parts of society. Jütting and de Laiglesia (2009, 9) find that “informal employment is the norm, rather than the exception, in most developing countries”. Poverty reduction and creation of decent employment need to be followed by national strategies to achieve better economic and social development.

Informal workers show a high risk for poverty
The ILO finds that in many African countries, farmers and informal workers are the groups which are affected most by poverty (ILO 2004). In sub-Saharan Africa, countries show infor-mal non-agricultural work proportions of more than 80% (Jütting/ de Laiglesia 2009, 18). As opposed to the formal economy, informal workers have little or no social security, battle with lower incomes, and deal with precarious work. Most of the newly created employment in the informal economy inserts people into a “vicious circle of low pay, high risks and limited mobility” (ibid. 18).

How to achieve Decent Work?

Ben Selwyn

The question of Decent Work (DW) – employment under conditions of freedom, equity, security and dignity – is, fundamentally, a question of human development. The Decent Work Agenda (DWA) has become part of the Millennium Development Goals, many of the world’s governments have signed its core conventions, and international institutions have incorporated the DWA into their development discourses. Despite these achievements the possibilities of achieving Really Decent Work (RDW) for the world’s labouring class appears distant. There are several reasons for this, but one is the limited and conservative nature of the DWA and the ILO’s conceptual inability to link RDW to broader processes of human development. DW’s conceptual weakness stems from its authors’ inability to see beyond labour’s subordinate relation to states and capital. DW does not generate a vision of a fundamentally different world, but an ameliorated version of the present. This accommodation to the present leads to a deep theoretical and conceptual weakness at the heart of the DW concept, so much so that it undermines its own immediate objectives. Put differently, the ILO’s efforts to promote DW are valuable, but their inability to adopt theoretical categories that explain reasons for indecent work undermine their objective and hamstring the efforts of labouring classes as they attempt to ameliorate their conditions.

Better Work or ‘Ethical Fix’? Lessons from Cambodia’s Apparel Industry

Dennis Arnold

The global apparel industry is characterised by low wages, poor occupational health and safety, and restrictions on freedom of association. These problems persist in spite of numerous corporate social responsibility initiatives, consumer campaigning for improved labour rights, and trade union organising in industrialising countries. In the wake of the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh on April 24, debates over the ‘race to the bottom’ for cheap and flexible labour have re-emerged. For example, Disney corporate representatives, who terminated sourcing to Bangladesh in late 2012 in response to a spate of factory fires, were quoted in a recent article saying the company would consider allowing its licensees to produce in Bangladesh if the country implemented the ILO’s Better Work programme, which uses ILO monitoring of factories in Cambodia as its model (Greenhouse 2013). Dan Rees, director of Better Work, is quoted in the same article saying before his organisation would get involved in Bangladesh, the country needed to enact stronger labour protection and stop suppressing trade unions.

Zero-hours Contracts

Steve Davies

Introduction
This summer in the United Kingdom (UK), ‘zero-hours contracts’ grabbed the headlines and dominated discussion about changes to working life. Zero-hours contracts are those in which a worker agrees to be available for work with a particular employer but without any guaranteed hours or times of work and therefore usually no guaranteed pay either. Under these contracts employers only need to pay for work when they need it. These contracts are not a new phenomenon, although the scale of their current use in the UK is unprecedented. This is seen by employers and ministers as part of the ‘necessary’ flexible labour market.

Who benefits from flexibility?
The Conservative-dominated British government boasts the UK is on the road to economic recovery and that, even at the worst point of the crisis, the private sector created hundreds of thousands of jobs which compensated for the impact of austerity on public sector employment. What ministers never explain is the nature of these new private sector jobs or how the crisis has been used to restructure the labour market. The increase in forms of ‘flexible’ work is closely related to the attacks on workers’ rights and trade unions. Thatcher began the process of weakening the position of workers, through legislative change to the labour markets and through laws which made it more difficult for unions to engage in legal strikes. This assault continued under the Blair and Brown ‘new Labour’ governments (Blair boasted that the UK had the least regulated labour market of any major industrialised country). The current British government has pushed even harder to remove legal protections for workers and to discourage the use of remaining legal protections by increasing the costs of bringing a case.

Why asbestos should be banned

Jan Cremers

There has been an outburst of public anger after the ‘discovery’ of asbestos polluted social housing, despite there being several other topical asbestos related incidents. This coupled with the spectacular Turin trial against some captains of industry who were sentenced for knowingly exposing their workforce for decades to the killing fibre and the alarming reports of annual death rates among teachers who were working in asbestos containing public schools. In turn, the driving thoughts behind recent research by a group of outstanding international experts were of a more pragmatic nature. The aim was to document that asbestos is still carried around the globe and that there is no reason to retreat from the fight against the trend and its effects. Unfortunately, the European Union (EU)-wide ban is not the end of the hazardous story; it is only one of the necessary steps to protecting workers and citizens against the fatal consequences of the use of a mineral fibre that started as the eternal, global insulation champion. The fairy tale of 'safe handling' that still leads to import and use in large parts of the world has to stop. In the following sections we summaries major developments that led to a slow phasing-out in Europe and a turn to other continents by the industry.

Unpacking the Marikana Massacre

Crispen Chinguno

The heartless killing of 34 striking miners at Marikana on 16 August 2012 by the South African police startled the world both in the manner and period it happened. Almost 20 years after the demise of apartheid, it evoked memories of the past and raised questions about the post-apartheid socioeconomic and political order and the integrity of industrial relations. This paper argues that Marikana is a crisis linked to the intersection of precariousness and fragmentation of workers. In explaining the choices by different stakeholders, it is imperative to unpack the political, historical, social and economic context.

The Marikana tragedy was, in fact, the zenith of a strike wave that had kicked off in January 2012 at Impala platinum mine following action by disgruntled rock drill operators (RDOs) after being excluded from a retention allowance awarded to mine blasters. This later spread beyond the platinum sector and was characterised by similar claims, violence and repertoires. The workers set uncompromising demands such as R12 500 per month for RDOs through independent workers’ committees directly to management disregarding industrial relations structures. Their militancy was unprecedented and from the onset rejected by the majority union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

Where is decent work in DfID policy? Marketisation and securitisation of UK international aid

Phoebe V. Moore

Nothing is spared. Even international development policy is marketised and securitised in the United Kingdom (UK). Outreach to areas of the world suffering from tsunami-related devastation has not disappeared, but recent government decisions reveal significant shifts for aid spending to prioritise future conflict prevention in areas facing high levels of unemployment and lacking welfare protection, and to manage future financial impacts of terrorist attacks. Controversially, UK aid spending is increasing in areas where crisis-driven unemployment can be linked to rising social unrest, even as cuts are made to the organisation most dedicated to advocating workers’ rights, the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

DfID securitises, marketises international aid
In March 2011 the Department for International Development (DfID) published the ‘Multilateral Aid Review: Ensuring maximum value for money for UK aid through multilateral organisations’ (DfID, 2011). The UK’s newly-elected coalition government in 2010 decided to increase development aid to 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) by 2013, which is, in cash terms, an increase from £7.8 billion in 2010–2011 to £11 billion in 2014–15. In that context, DfID, in cooperation with then Secretary of State for International Development Anthony Mitchell reviewed 43 multilateral aid organisations previously used to channel funding using a specific methodology designed to measure organisations’ aims and objectives, value for money and cost effectiveness. UN-HABITAT, UNIDO, UNISDR[1], and the ILO, did not meet these marketised development objectives, so DfID decided to withdraw core funding to established partners. Market-oriented judgements such as these are part of the wider strategy of securing the dominant status of neoliberalism as an expansive global framework for economic and social policy.

The National Pact to Eradicate Slave Labour in Brazil: A useful tool for unions?

Siobhán McGrath

Lisa Carstensen

In 2012 two major clothing retailers, the Spanish group Zara and the Brazilian retailer Marisa, were suspended from membership of the “National Pact to Eradicate Slave Labour.” In both cases, the suspension occurred less than a year after the firms became members in the first place. As members of the Pact, they had pledged to eliminate slave labour from their supply chains. These cases generated a major debate – about forced labour in São Paulo’s clothing industry but also about the Pact itself and, linked to this, about the “Dirty List” of those found to be using slave labour[i].

So how does the Pact work? Is it a model for other countries committed to the fight against forced labour? Is it useful for the trade union movement? What are its limitations? We argue below that the Pact is a powerful tool which has been used to make progress in the ongoing fight against forced labour. Before explaining how we come to this conclusion, however, it is necessary to provide a short overview of the institutional and legal context of the Brazilian struggle against slave labour.

“Decent Work” and the Valentin Urusov Case: A Test of Sincerity

Anna Wolańska

Like Russian politics, labour relations in Russia are rife with contradictions.

On the one hand, Vladimir Putin addressed the International Labour Conference in 2011 and marched with the trade unions in a 2012 May Day demonstration, portraying himself as a supporter of progressive labour legislation and the notion of social partnership. Russia has an established system of tripartism: no social issue can be decided on without being discussed by the country’s permanent tripartite commission.

To discuss the further development of tripartism and socially-responsible responses to the global crisis, the Russian government will host a major international conference on decent work in Moscow on 11–12 December 2012. Around 800 delegates are expected to attend, including prime ministers, government officials, trade unionists and representatives of employers’ associations from 80 countries.

Speaking in Geneva at a joint briefing with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Director-General Guy Ryder during the last session of the ILO Governing Body, Russian Federation Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Protection Lyubov Yeltsova invited all ILO member states to take part in the conference. She emphasised the importance Russia attaches to cooperation in furthering international labour and social standards, the protection of individual and collective rights, and the interests of workers. As she put it, “the concept of decent work makes it possible to seek solutions to key challenges facing the international community, such as job creation, poverty reduction, social stability and globalization, on a just basis.”

The economic crisis and job quality in Europe: some worrying trends and worse may be to come

Janine Leschke

Andrew Watt

The economic crisis has had a dramatic and lasting impact on labour markets worldwide. The recent ILO Global Employment Trends report spelled out the damage wrought in terms of the declines in employment and consequent rise in unemployment: globally the employment-to-population ratio fell by one percentage point and unemployment rose by 27 million persons.

But what have been the impacts on the quality of work? We can shed some light on this for the 27 member countries of the European Union using a Job Quality Index (JQI) developed at the European Trade Union Institute. We first calculated the JQI based on 2005 data; see here for the findings. We have now repeated the analysis based on 2010 data; by comparing the two sets of results we can see how job quality has changed on various dimensions over the five-year period and draw some conclusions about the impact of the crisis. The full results will be available shortly as an ETUI Working Paper; here we provide Global Labour Column readers with a brief analysis of the key findings[1] .

Measuring job quality: key features of the ETUI’s JQI

Whether one perceives one’s job as being of high or low quality depends, obviously, on a mix of both subjective and objective factors. And the mix is complex: how can, for instance, a clean and safe working environment be weighed against, say, autonomy at work or the fact that one is working the ‘right’ number of hours? The interested reader will find here a detailed description of the methodology underlying the JQI, our attempt to systematise the numerous factors impacting on job quality. For the purposes of this column the following basic features need to be borne in mind.

The Microfinance Delusion

Milford Bateman

The optimistic beginning

Thirty years ago, it was widely thought that the perfect solution to unemployment and poverty in developing countries had been found in the shape of microfinance, the provision of tiny microloans used by the poor to establish an income-generating activity. Microfinance is most closely associated with the US trained Bangladeshi economist and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Dr Muhammad Yunus. By celebrating self-help and individual entrepreneurship, and by implicitly discrediting all forms of collective effort, such as trade unions, social movements, cooperatives, public spending, a pro-poor ‘developmental state’ and – most of all – collective moves to ensure a more equitable redistribution of wealth and power, neoliberal policy-makers in the international development community fell in love with microfinance. The World Bank, USAID and other agencies began to aggressively push forward the concept and, in order to reduce the need for subsidies, also insisted microfinance be turned into a for-profit business. Microfinance soon became the international development community’s highest profile, most generously funded and supposedly most effective economic and social development policy.

Decent Work 2.0

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!"
 

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.

Contesting a ‘just transition to a low carbon economy’

Jacklyn Cock

Introduction

Recently, the South African labour federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), has expressed its commitment to a ‘just transition to a low carbon economy.’ However, at this moment the content of that commitment is unclear. Members of Cosatu affiliates could have very different understandings of the scale and nature of the changes involved. A ‘just transition’ could involve demands for shallow change focused on protecting vulnerable workers, or it could involve deep change rooted in a vision of dramatically different forms of production and consumption. In this sense, the ecological crisis represents an opportunity to not only address the unemployment crisis in our society, but to demand the redistribution of power and resources, to challenge the conventional understanding of economic growth and to mobilise for an alternative development path.

The dilemma of job creation and decent work

Edward Webster

In August 2010 South African government officials began closing down clothing and textile factories in Newcastle, in the province of KwaZulu–Natal. This came in the face of angry protests from the workers because the owners were paying less than the statutory minimum wage of R324 ($49) a week. The factory owners said they could not pay more and survive in the face of cheap Chinese textile imports.
 

Globally, the clothing and textile industry is to a large extent controlled by an oligopolistic group of large retailers and branded manufacturers, who stipulate their supply specifications in terms of low price, high quality and short lead times. But due to the strengthening of the local currency (the rand) since 2003, the end of the Multifibre Agreement (MFA) in 2004 and relatively high labour costs, South Africa no longer has a comparative advantage in an integrated global economy.[i]

Argentina’s ‘Year of Decent Work’, a critical assessment

Bruno Dobrusin

The centre-left government of Cristina Kirchner declared 2011 as the ‘Year of Decent Work’ in Argentina, following consultations with the ILO and other international institutions regarding government programmes during the current global economic crisis. The Kirchner administration has indeed promoted several counter-cyclical measures to fight against the global recession and maintain levels of employment in the country. The relative success of these policies, together with the continuous economic growth that Argentina has witnessed since 2003, led the government to tour the international forums such as the G20 meetings and claim that Argentina is an example of a successful response to the crisis. Despite the improvements in the overall economy and the high levels of employment that the country is witnessing, the so-called ‘model’ is far from ideal, and has to be questioned on its main claims. This article discusses the recent improvements as presented by the government and the counter-facts suggested by a recent study carried on by the Workers’ Confederation of Argentina (CTA)[i].