An Ongoing Engagement

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) affects all employers’ organizations and their members in one way or another. It is a complex issue with many stakeholders, facets and impacts. The IOE is actively engaged in various CSR debates – indeed, in more and more fora around the world CSR is heading the agendas of groups ranging from NGOs and academics to governments and companies.

Major debates within the European Union, at the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNHCHR) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) or as part of the ILO’s World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization have all led the IOE to remain focussed on presenting the views of employers, drawing on the IOE approach to CSR that has been developed.

Within the ILO the debate has been guided by the work of the IOE CSR Working Group which has drawn up an employers’ position to the debate. This position gives support to the Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy as the ILO point of reference for business in the CSR debate and supports its promotion. It also calls on the ILO Business and Social Initiatives Database to remain as a neutral depository of information on business-led social initiatives. The position paper finally underlines the importance of the ILO’s role in strengthening the capacity of member States to implement and enforce their national labour laws.

The employers’ position is also clear in what it does not want the ILO to be doing : namely becoming a monitoring or verification organization with respect to voluntary company CSR initiatives; judging or ranking company performance or behaviour; creating any form of conditionality for or against companies on the basis of their CSR action or non-action; and perhaps most fundamentally, shifting responsibility for international labour standards onto companies.