Global Labour Standards
STATEMENT BY AMBASSADOR HJALMAR W. HANNESON
VICE-PRESIDENT, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL, UNITED NATIONS
PUBLIC HEARING: GLOBAL LABOUR STANDARDS
European Parliament, Committee on Employment and Social Affairs
22 February 2006
Tack så mycket herr ordförande, för dina varma välkomstord. Det är en stor glädje för mig att få möjligheten att resa ifrån N.Y. till Bryssel och delta i detta möte. Diskussionen som vi har hört om ”transitional arrangements which restrict the free movement of workers on the labour markets of the EU” innan vi nu börjar diskutera “Global Labour Standards” har varit högst interessant för mig som isländsk representant, eftersom Island, Norge och Liechtenstein tillhör EEA, the European Economic Area.
Dessutom är det bra att få höra och öva svenskan lite grann !!
Mr. Chairman,
Members of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs
Other members of the European Parliament of the EU
Invited Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen:
On behalf of the Bureau of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, I am delighted to join you in this Public Hearing on Global Labour Standards. We are especially pleased that the Committee has invited the participation of the Bureau of ECOSOC because as you may know the Council will be addressing aspects of employment and work at its annual substantive session in July 2006. The theme for the 2006 High Level or Ministerial Segment of the substantive session is “Creating an environment at the national and international levels conducive to generating full and productive employment and decent work for all, and its impact on sustainable development”.
This theme was chosen by ECOSOC Member States in recognition of the fact that productive employment and decent work will have to be at the centre of economic and social policies designed to achieve the central Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015. This view was endorsed by the Heads of State and Government at the 2005 World Summit who declared that: “We strongly support a fair globalization and resolve to make the goals of full and productive employment and decent work for all, including for women and young people, a central objective of our national and international macro-economic policies as well as poverty reduction strategies. These measures should also encompass the elimination of child labour. We also resolve to protect the human rights of workers”.
While your Committee’s focus here today is on global labour standards, I wanted to take the opportunity to speak more broadly on the role of the Council as a whole, its work on issues related to employment and how it intends to address this year’s theme with some thoughts on how the discussions here today could help to advance the overall agenda on employment and decent work.
The Charter of the United Nations established the Economic and Social Council as the principal organ to coordinate economic, social, and related work of the UN system. It serves as the central forum for discussing international economic and social issues, and for formulating policy recommendations addressed to both Member States and the United Nations system. The Council is responsible for promoting higher standards of living, full employment, and economic and social progress; identifying solutions to international economic, social and health problems; facilitating international cultural and educational cooperation; and encouraging universal respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It has the power to make or initiate studies and reports on these issues. It also has the power to assist the preparations and organisation of major international conferences in the economic and social and related fields and to facilitate a coordinated follow-up to these conferences.
It is within the follow-up to conferences and summits that the Council has addressed the specific issue of employment. One of the first conferences to substantively address the issue of employment was the World Summit on Social Development which took place in Copenhagen in 1995. Commitment 3 of the Summit Declaration stated that Member States committed themselves to “promoting the goal of full employment as a basic priority of our economic and social policies, and to enabling all men and women to attain secure and sustainable livelihoods through freely chosen productive employment and work.” One of five chapters of the Summit’s Action Plan was devoted to the “Expansion of Productive Employment and Reduction of Unemployment”. It was this summit that underlined the need to pursue the goal of quality jobs and within this context the need to safeguard basic rights and interest of workers as defined by relevant International Labour Organization and other international instruments. It is this notion of “quality jobs” that is at the heart of “global labour standards”.
The centrality of employment and decent work was also featured in the other major UN Conferences and Summits of the 1990s including the Beijing Conference on Women and the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development. As you are aware the Economic and Social Council through its various functional commissions has been mandated to coordinate the integrated follow-up to these various conferences and summits and the challenges to the implementation of the various actions are analyzed and recommendations made during the various meetings of the Commissions and the five-year reviews of the various Action Plans.
It was in this context that the Council devoted its 1999 High Level Segment to the theme of "The role of employment and work in poverty eradication: the empowerment and advancement of women". Among the issues discussed was that of core labour standards and decent work. It was agreed that there was a close relationship between the success of national and international efforts to tackle unemployment, poverty, and inequality, and achieving worldwide respect for core labour standards. In its conclusions, the Council stressed the importance of international labour standards and human rights declarations as critical to have effect on social policy-making; that employment growth was not just about the number of jobs created; workers had rights, and the goal was decent work as decent work is the necessary foundation for sustainable development. These conclusions from the Council’s substantive session of 1999 are certainly central to the issues that you will be addressing in this Public Hearing today.
Indeed, equally pertinent and compelling are the commitments made by Heads of State and Government at the Millennium Summit of September 2000 and the recently concluded 2005 World Summit which looked at, among other things progress made in the implementation of the Millennium Declaration. The commitment to the overarching Millennium Development Goal of reducing the incidence of income-poverty by half by 2015 was made by all countries on behalf of all their citizens. Combined with the World Summit’s call for a fair globalization, the commitment to poverty reduction has put the agenda of productive and decent work at the centre of the development agenda because of its centrality in reducing poverty and fostering social integration. It is clear that so far, globalization has not led to the creation of sufficient and sustainable decent employment opportunities around the world. The unemployed are the most vulnerable in society and likely to suffer from poverty in all its manifestations. People who cannot secure adequate employment are unable to meet their health, education and other basic needs and those of their families or to accumulate savings to protect their households from downturns in the economy.
Mr. Chairman,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It has been 11 years since full employment was identified as a core objective by the World Summit for Social Development and 7 years since the Council first addressed the issue of employment and work. As the Council readies to take up the agenda of employment and decent work, it is clear that progress achieved has fallen far short of expectations. Indeed, the current global situation regarding productive employment and decent work remains dire as it was in the 1990s. According to ILO, half of the world’s workers still do not earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the US$2 a day poverty line and global economic growth is increasingly failing to translate into new and better jobs that would lead to a reduction in poverty. There are over 88 million unemployed youth around the world, together comprising nearly half of the world's total unemployment. This situation is economically and socially unsustainable. For this reason, urgent action has to be taken to find ways of implementing the commitment of the Heads of State and Government on employment and to reverse the trend of the past where job and income security for the world's workers has been an afterthought in global development.
It is this emphasis on action and the need to move from policy-making to implementation that has marked the organizing of the preparatory meeting of the Council for the High Level Segment in July 2006. The meeting, scheduled for 4-5 April 2006, will have as its outcome a set of policy recommendations for the consideration at the High Level Segment of the Council. The meeting which will bring together all stakeholders, including Member States, the UN system, intergovernmental organizations, civil society (non-governmental organizations, academia, foundations, the private sector, employers and workers organizations), will be co-organized by the various agencies, funds and programmes of the UN system, led principally by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations and the International Labour Office (ILO). I take this opportunity, on behalf of ECOSOC, to invite the European Parliament and the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs to consider participating in this event.
The preparatory meeting will examine a range of broad global issues related to the theme of full and productive employment and decent work as well as a range of sectoral or thematic issues. These issues include tradeoffs between equality and growth, between productivity and employment and between the quantity and quality of work; ways of maximizing the employment potential of the informal economy in rural and urban areas of developing countries; promoting productive employment and decent work for women and young people; how best to foster social and economic recovery in countries emerging from conflict or recovering from natural disasters and the special challenges of labour migration. Bearing in mind the emphasis on implementation, best practices will be highlighted that are potentially replicable in other countries and regions where progress in these areas remains a great challenge.
The meeting will address at least two issues which I view to be pertinent to you today. The first is how an integrated global agenda on trade, aid, investment, debt relief and technology could lend support to national policies to ensure full, productive employment and decent work. The second is how enterprise development can promote decent work.
Your discussions here today on ways to encourage socially responsible investment, its links to company performance and how to apply social and environmental criteria to the awarding of contracts can contribute to a richer discussion of how both national and international policies encourage and promote full and productive employment and decent work. I encourage you to send the results of the Public Hearing to the Council and, on behalf of ECOSOC, urge your participation in its work, both at its Preparatory Meeting in early April and its substantive session in July 2006.
I thank you.
