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Global Strategy to Promote Full Employment
By Someshwar Singh
The International Labour Organization (ILO) is likely to engage in preparing a global strategy to attain full employment, seen as one of the likely outcomes of the Social Summit, Juan Somavia, the Director General of the International Labour Organization, said here yesterday .
Chairing a panel on "Promotion of full employment", Somavia noted that the strategy, which would include the problem of indigenous or local 'communities', would have to look into not just what the speakers at the panel agreed on, but also focus on the wide differences in perception in many areas which "raised real and fundamental issues to reflect upon." The areas where speakers showed unanimity were the need to use macroeconomic policies to stimulate full employment; increasing opportunities through education and training; social dialogue (though this was recognised to be difficult for the largely unorganised informal sector); addressing specific groups like the young, elderly, women and child labour; and using the opportunities of new technologies. But there were speakers at the high level panel - from among the panellists and others - who raised the more fundamental issues .
The Vice president of Venezuela, Isaias Rodriguez Diaz, said that globalisation itself was affecting employment. "We see the problem of globalisation as a basic factor affecting employment. Globalisation has brought about not just economic instability but inequalities as well. It has raised questions about the ethic of individualism and competition. At the same time, it has questioned our sense of community and tolerance." On the positive side, the Venezuelan vice president noted that globalisation offers technology which could be used to encourage knowledge-based interactions. Dikgang Moseneke, chairman of Telekom South Africa, said that the challenges facing developing countries were merely adding on to their historical evolution through slavery and colonialism (and apartheid in the case of South Africa). Explaining some of the new challenges, he said the primary causes of lack of full employment in most African regions related to the lack of enabling environment and political stability, wars, and absence of regulatory framework. "Globalisation has not brought about the opportunities we hoped for," Moseneke said. "Coping with the changing global economic environment has brought about enormous pressures - with decreasing fixed direct investments and flights of capital seeking immediate return. We are facing fairly advanced competition from global conglomerates. But participating in that global expansion also poses challenges to our employment." The most biting comments came from a representative of the Indigenous Communities, who stated that governments - both from the North and South - had made compromises with the major forces of globalisation. The major transnational corporations, he said, had taken control and were even operating in the United Nations itself in the form of "civil" outfits. "The TNCs today have embarked on increasing mergers, purchasing banks and insurance companies," he added. "Giant monopolies are splitting up States, which have lost any negotiating capacity, while laying off thousands of people at one stroke. Investors are engaged in a new form of colonialism between the north and south. The great powers are imposing and continue to impose globalisation - which goes back to the conquest of Americas in 1492." The Minister of Labour and Social Affairs of Spain, Juan Carlos Aparicio explained how Spain had managed to succeed in recent years in rapid job expansion, much of which was of a durable nature. He said social dialogue involving all three parties had a great role to play but that wage restraints also had led to growth in employment. "New and stable contracts have been arrived at, along with measures against abusive use of short-term contracts." Commenting on the importance of resources for education in the context of the link between education and child exploitation, Annar Cassam of UNESCO said that when education was deliberately denied, it led to child exploitation and child labour. In the case of Sub Saharan Africa, she said that the World Bank and the IMF had in the last several years had forced the region to reduce by 40 percent the expenditure on education because the structural adjustment programmes they were promoting. Mozambique, for example, was spending 33% of its export earnings on debt service and only 3 percent on education .
"Countries have no resources for education," Cassam said,"so kids go into the streets, into plantations...and all kinds of jobs. That is not all, even the teachers are driving taxis to survive. The link is clear - decreasing resources reduce budgets for education which is causing exploitation of child labour." Speaking on behalf of all NGOs, I. Hoferlin of the Social Alert told the panel of the extreme disappointment of the NGO community at the endorsement by the United Nations at the highest level of the Bretton Woods-assisted report on "Better World For All." On Wednesday, over 80 NGOs, including the World Council of Churches, had joined in protesting the document that had been co-signed and launched by the UN Secretary-General and had demanded the UN to withdraw its endorsement. The UN member states were also asked to repudiate it .
Hoferlin said the document was presented as a new consensus between the United Nations, the OECD, the IMF and the World Bank, thereby reinforcing Northern perspectives and disempowering the South while undermining the political inclusiveness that defines the UN. Summarising the agreements and the cleavages on the issue of promoting full employment at the end of the three-hour panel discussion, the Chairman of the panel, Somavia concluded, "We have to be honest, free, and frank about what is going on in the world - looking at it through the eyes of the people."
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Solidarity 2000 starting 17th of June!
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The 1996 Copenhagen Social Summit final report in English, French and Spanish.