The IOE maintains efforts to promote the positive aspects of globalization as well as involve itself in debates both within the ILO and elsewhere, with regard to its challenges and opportunities.
The IOE will continue its work to:
Support the market economy;
Identify the obstacles to economic integration;
Promote the establishment or reform of institutions, political systems, practices and processes needed to overcome these obstacles;
Promote the creation or strengthening of market and non market institutions to create the conditions to benefit from trade, investment and technology absorption and diffusion;
Promote the development of policies for, and investment in, education and skills development;
Support joint efforts with others who seek to create the appropriate environment to bring the benefits of globalization to those countries that want to participate.
The report of the ILO World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization was launched in late February 2004. While there is much in the Report that business would see differently, there was also much that was positive. Perhaps the most striking outcome from this Report was that globalization can be a tremendous force for positive change – economic, political and social. The Commission helped to move the debate on globalization away from confrontational polemics. However, the Report entailed compromises and it is doubtful if even one of the 26 commissioners agreed to all its recommendations.
Some of the recommendations provide the ILO with an opportunity to focus on the key areas where it can add value and where it has demonstrated its strength and expertise. Above all the Report provided an opportunity for the ILO to position itself as the principal agency to develop practical policies for employment generation within the multilateral system.
The Report has as a key objective ‘Making Decent Work a Global Goal’. This objective will require a real focus on those working in the worst conditions – namely the informal economy. Real emphasis needs to be given to promoting labour market policies and assisting institutions to enable them to apply to everyone. Regulation needs to work for business and workers – not to hinder them. This objective will not be easy to achieve. However, the ILO is well placed to effect real change.
The essential role that the private sector can play in development and poverty alleviation is increasingly being recognized by major international policy makers and this was a central component of another report in 2004, the UNDP Report ‘Unleashing entrepreneurship: making business work for the poor’. Major global initiatives of this kind can be a useful means in giving focus to an issue, but chiefly what is needed are tangible, practical outcomes that have a real impact.
The IOE’s role is to ensure that the foregoing perspectives and initiatives are promoted at the international level and that the views of business are clearly communicated.
