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The International Labour Organisation - ILO - celebrates its 85th anniversary and the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Philadelphia. For over ten years, the promotion of decent work has been its favourite hobby-horse. WCL thinks that ILO must be placed at the same level as WTO and the World Bank.
 The ILO magazine "World of Work" explains. ILO has renovated and improved itself several times since its foundation, 85 years ago. Already at the end of World War II and in adopting the Declaration of Philadelphia, the Organisation affirmed that work is not a commodity; that way it positioned itself as an organisation struggling for social justice. "(…) The ILO has been considered to be an essential instrument for building peace and security in the world. It proposed a completely new conception of the relation between employers and workers. It expressed the astonishing willingness of the governments to share with the employers' and workers' organisations the sovereignty they would normally have exercised with regard to international decisions concerning the world of work (…)".
In the past ten years, many decisions of importance to the workers were made. One of them was the adoption, by the Geneva Conference of 1998, of the ILO Declaration on the fundamental principles and rights at work (freedom of association and collective bargaining, elimination of each form of forced labour, effective abolition of child labour and the elimination of discrimination in the world of work). Promotion of work is also at the heart of the ILO's action. It has developed four goals to guide its action: the promotion and implementation of the fundamental principles and rights at work, the increase in opportunities for men and women to obtain a decent employment and income, the rise in the scope and efficiency of social protection for all and the strengthening of tripartism and social dialogue.
In view of the advance of globalisation, ILO created in 2002 the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation. In February 2004, this Commission published its report entitled A Fair Globalisation. It is a critical and balanced document that results from a consensus and places globalisation back in its social dimension by recognising its positive aspects and potential as well as its dysfunctions and weaknesses. The strength of the report lies largely in the association of personalities from a wide variety of environments, even if it does not really propose an alternative to the current situation. The report includes a series of ambitious proposals aimed to ensure its follow-up.
Lastly, the World Confederation of Labour comes back to the standard-setting system of ILO. The international standards of ILO are the only form of international social legislation. Even if these standards are ratified, they are not always applied. It would therefore be essential to strengthen this standard-setting system and to raise ILO to the same level as the Bretton Woods institutions and WTO. |
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For more information, please contact WCL Press Department :
Phone: +32 (2) 285 47 55 - e-mail: info@cmt-wcl.org |
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