9 June 2017

2017 ILC - Business community key to resolving issues of concern to international community, ILO Director-General tells Employers' Group

Guy Ryder, ILO Director-General visited the daily meeting of the Employers’ Group on the morning of Wednesday 7 June. In his comments to the Employers he congratulated Mthunzi Mdwaba on his election to the role of Chairperson of the Employers' Group, welcomed the new IOE President Erol Kiresepi and highlighted the important contribution made to the work of the ILO over many years by Jørgen Rønnest. He expressed his hope that his own re-election for a second term in office reflected a growing sense of confidence in his ability to guide the Organisation and to act to achieve the common goals he and the Office shared with the IOE and the Employers in general. He also thanked the IOE for its proactive stance on the future of work.

In commenting on his Report to the ILC on climate change and on the discussion on labour migration, he stressed the importance of the voice of the private sector in these top-priority debates.

Ousséïne Diallo (Côte d’Ivoire) asked Guy Ryder about the possibilities to strengthen technical cooperation efforts, especially in fragile states to which the latter responded that extra-budgetary resources must be mobilised to respond to demand.

Kris de Meester (Belgium) raised a question on the use of the term ‘non-standard forms of work’ in the ILO and whether a shift towards ‘diverse forms of employment’ would be foreseeable soon. Guy Ryder responded indicating that the ILO has, for 90 years, operated on the idea that progress consisted of getting people into formal standards of work. The approach focused on getting people out of informality and into the formal sector. He went on to say that we now see a further disaggregation of the formal economy and this therefore presents a new kind of debate for the ILO.

A question on the coherence of ILO centenary initiatives was asked by Pablo Bobic (Chile), to which Guy Ryder responded that although each initiative has its own focus, all of them are linked as one cannot begin to address the transition to the green economy, without focusing on gender, skills, the Future of Work and other related issues.