Brussels, 29/05/2009 (Agence Europe) - The 98th session of the International Labour Conference will be held in Geneva from 3-19 June. This year, the conference will convene a plenary committee to examine the consequences of the global economic and financial crisis, in particular on the basis of the report from the director general of the International Labour Office (ILO), Juan Somavia, on the “global jobs pact: recovery through decent work”.
On the sidelines of the conference, an informal ministerial meeting, “Europe”, will be held under Czech presidency during the afternoon of Tuesday 16 June. The theme chosen by the Czech presidency is “European labour markets - opportunities and challenges for professional mobility”. This informal meeting will bring together a number of heads of state and government, top-level decision-makers, business leaders and trade union representatives, as well as heads of regional development institutions and others who lead public opinion. It will provide an exceptional global platform for setting out financial, economic and social policies around the theme of enterprise, employment and decent work, centred on the human person. It will be fully integrated in the work of the International Labour Conference and receive contributions from the plenary committee on responses for addressing the crisis, and will also contribute to this work in turn, ILO states. The conclusions of the summit will be included in the document produced by the plenary committee (whose work will begin on Wednesday 3 June at 3.00pm) on ways to address the crisis, to be submitted to the international conference for adoption. The following heads of state and government have already confirmed they will be taking part: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Brazil), Nicolas Sarkozy (France), Blaise Compaoré (Burkina Faso), Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (Argentina), Lech Kaczynski (Poland), Armando Guebuza (Mozambique), Recep Tayyip ERdogan (Turkey), and Sheikh Hasina (Bangladesh). The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, is expected on Monday 15 June and his commissioner for social affairs, employment and equal opportunities, Vladimir Spidla, will be in Geneva on Tuesday 16 June.
Discussions in the plenary committee are expected to cover issues such as the role of the ILO in seeking solutions to the crisis and in promoting coherence of such solutions at international level, the possibility of a global jobs pact, salary policies, the role of international labour standards, the protection of principles and fundamental rights at work, support to companies in the public and private sector, kick-starting employment, social safety nets, social dialogue to the service of recovery, and the ILO's global employment agenda. The chairman of the plenary committee is to present a brief report on the committee's work to the ILO summit on the global job crisis during the opening session at 10.00am on 15 June.
In his report on facing up to the global jobs crisis through recovery based on decent work, Juan Somavia underlines that a global jobs pact meets the immediate needs of workers in the formal and informal sectors of the economy, of families and of enterprise, while laying the bases for equitable globalisation supported by a method of balanced growth at social, environmental and economic levels. The director general, who cited several elements of a global jobs pact, mentioned: (1) placing employment and social protection at the heart of recovery policies in order to accelerate job recovery, ensure everyone has access to employment through measures tailored to the less advantaged categories, and enlarging social protection and strengthening security, which entails: - support for companies, especially SMEs, and guaranteed access to credit; - protection of decent jobs by helping to reduce the duration of work combined with development of skills to limit dismissals, which represent pure loss; - support for job seekers through well-thought-out unemployment benefits; - strengthened active labour market programmes to avoid the risk of long-term unemployment and social exclusion; - effectiveness of programmes that guarantee employment, mainly in developing countries; - special aid measures for young people, mainly the less advantaged; - increased investment in infrastructure and public high job intensive goods; - investment in the green economy of tomorrow; - investment in food safety and rural development; - setting up and extending a social protection system for low income groups and workers in the informal economy; - assistance for migrant workers and their families; (2) supporting recovery policies through social dialogue and respect of workers' rights: - all countries should establish recovery policies in consultation with social partners; - workers' rights and international labour standards must be protected and promoted; (3) financing a global jobs pact (which requires both public and private funding, at national and international level). The re-establishment of normal credit flows for investment, trade, consumer durables and innovation is an essential condition for productive recovery of the real economy.
We would point out that the International Labour Conference, which is often compared to an international labour parliament, has several functions including the development and endorsement of international labour standards in the form of conventions and recommendations, the follow-up of application of conventions and recommendations at national level, and examination of reports covering the four fundamental rights (freedom of association and effective recognition of the right to collective negotiation, elimination of any kind of forced or compulsory work, effective abolition of child labour, and the elimination of discrimination in jobs and professions). The ILO is the UN tripartite agency that brings together governments, employers and workers of its member nations to work together to promote decent work throughout the world. The International Labour Office is a body attached to the UN and is responsible for general matters relating to work in the world. It harmonises concepts and definitions relating to labour and employment, in particular those relating to the active population and to the unemployed. For information: http://www.ilo.org (G.B./transl.jl)