30 May 2018

ILO Office support for the Global Deal: a serious failure in ILO governance with serious repercussions on current ILC discussions

Dear Members and Partners,

At the second Employers' Group Meeting of the 107th Session of the International Labour Conference, a discussion on the Swedish Global Deal took place. Employers supported the IOE stance to reject this initiative which breaches and transgresses tripartism:

• It is the first social dialogue initiative at global level to enjoy aggressive support of the ILO hierarchy at the highest level without having been approved by ILO Constituents, ignoring repeated warnings from the Employers' Group. This support also means investing resources without a mandate and diverting it from approved social dialogue activities: a serious failure in governance.
• The Global Deal is also the first social dialogue initiative which has been designed and developed without the involvement of representative Employers' Organisations at national, regional and international levels.
• Companies signing The Global Deal would have to "report publicly on actions undertaken to negotiate at different levels," thus requiring them to conform to reporting obligations without any further value and additionally placing them under pressure to sign International Framework Agreements with Global Union Federations (GUFs).
• The Global Deal pushes a "top-down" approach, rather than a bottom-up approach, involving Global Unions and ignoring local employers and workers.

Employers support social dialogue, which underpins the values of the ILO. They also respect legitimate initiatives from individual Governments. But it is up to ILO Constituents to decide at what level and in what form social dialogue should take place. The Employers' Group cannot and will not accept the attempt to legitimise The Global Deal by tolerating its inclusion in ILC Discussions. It also reiterates the short-sightedness of this unilateral transgression of governance and failure to adhere to principles of established tripartism by the ILO Office. This has serious adverse repercussions for current ILC discussions and threatens to derail the same, while it also places the governance of the ILO as a whole in jeopardy.

Yours sincerely,