The Decent Work Agenda and Achieving the Millennium Development Goals

1. Development Education Conference 2006 Linking the Global and the Local Dublin City University, Friday March 24th The Decent Work Agenda and Achieving the Millennium Development Goals By : Gemma Adaba International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) Background Research: Matthew L. Hart (ICFTU United Nations Office, New York) Contributions: James Howard and Claire Courteille (ICFTU Headquarters, Brussels)

2. The Millennium Declaration • Adopted by Heads of State at the UN General Assembly in September 2000 • Codified into eight millennium development goals (MDGs) and eighteen time-bound targets. • Goals to be achieved by 2015 • Interim review during the 2005 World Summit of the UN 14-16 September, 2005

3. Millennium Development Goals • Goal 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger • Target 1: Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day • Target 2: Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger • Goal 2. Achieve universal primary education • Target 3: Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling • Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empower women • Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015 • Goal 4. Reduce child mortality • Target 5: Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five

4. Millennium Development Goals • Goal 5. Improve maternal health • Target 6: Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio • Goal 6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases • Target 7: Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS • Target 8: Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases • Goal 7. Ensure environmental sustainability • Target 9: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources • Target 10: Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water • Target 11: Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020

5. Millennium Development Goals • Goal 8. Develop a global partnership for development • Target 12: Develop a non-discriminatory trading and financial system • Target 13: Address the special needs of the least developed countries • Target 14: Address the special needs of landlocked countries and small island developing States • Target 15: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term. • Target 16: In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth. • Target 17: In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries • Target 18: In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

6. Uneven Progress Towards Achieving the MDGs “Despite progress in many areas, overall the world is falling short of what is needed, especially in the poorest countries. As the Millennium Project’s report makes clear, our agenda is still achievable globally - but only if we break with business as usual and dramatically accelerate scale up action until 2015, beginning over the next 12 months” Kofi Annan “In Larger Freedom” NY, 2005

7. The UN Millennium Project Led by Jeffrey D. Sachs “Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals” http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/index.htm

8. The Millennium Project Ten Key Recommendations: Developing country governments should adopt development strategies bold enough to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets for 2015. Where Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) already exist, those should be aligned with the MDGs. The MDG-based poverty reduction strategies should anchor the scaling up of public investments, capacity building, domestic resource mobilization, and official development assistance. Developing country governments should craft and implement the MDG-based poverty reduction strategies in transparent and inclusive processes, working closely with civil society organizations, the domestic private sector, and international partners.

9. The Millennium Project • International partners should identify at least a dozen MDG “fast-track” countries for a rapid scale up of official development assistance (ODA) in 2005. • Developed and developing countries should jointly launch, in 2005, a group of quick win actions to save and improve millions of lives and to promote economic growth. • Developing country governments should align national strategies with such regional initiatives as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and the Caribbean Community (and Common Market), and regional groups should receive increased direct donor support for regional projects. • High-income countries should increase official development assistance (ODA) from 0.25 percent of donor GNP in 2003 to around 0.44 percent in 2006 and 0.54 percent in 2015 to support the MDGs.

10. The Millennium Project • High income countries should open their markets to developing country exports through the Doha trade round and help Least Developed Countries raise export competitiveness through investments in critical trade trade-related infrastructure, including electricity, roads, and ports. • International donors should mobilize support for global scientific research and development to address special needs of the poor in areas of health, agriculture, natural resource and environmental management, energy, and climate. • The UN Secretary-General and the UN Development Group should strengthen the coordination of UN agencies, funds, and programs to support the MDGs, at headquarters and country level

11. The Centrality of Decent Work to Achieving the MDGs • At the national level, developing country governments need to formulate policies aimed at tackling the root causes of poverty. • A starting point must be the realization of the centrality of decent work to poverty eradication • The “Sachs Report” fails to pay sufficient attention to a critical element: Employment and Decent Work

12. Towards a Global Partnership for Development • Under MDG8, governments of industrialized and developing countries agreed to forge a global partnership for development. • The realization of this goal is critical for providing an enabling environment • To foster economic growth • To revitalize productive economic sectors at the local level • To support a sustained emphasis on employment policies, and the Decent Work Agenda

13. The Many Dimensions of Poverty • Poverty is multidimensional and many of its dimensions relate to the world of work. People are poor because: • They are deprived of the means to a decent quality of life • They lack stable, predictable and adequate incomes • They lack safe working conditions • They are precluded from access to supporting resources such as land, credit, and skills-training

14. The Many Dimensions of Poverty • People are poor because (continued): • They suffer discrimination and social exclusion • They are denied the rights to organize into unions to improve their conditions of work • They lack the means to provide healthcare and to keep their children at school. Child labor becomes another dimension of poverty.

15. The Decent Work Agenda At the 89th International Labour Conference in June 1999, the ILO launched its Decent Work agenda, centered around four strategic objectives • To achieve fundamental principles and rights at work • To promote greater employment and income opportunities for both women and men • To aid in extending social protection • To promote social dialogue

16. The Decent Work Agenda • Provides an overarching policy framework and a set of mechanisms to achieve • “A Fair Globalization” • Robust wealth and income distributive mechanisms • Economic growth • Employment and pro-poor growth • Resource transfers to the poor

17. The Decent Work Agenda • Provides an overarching policy framework and a set of mechanisms to achieve • Social protections and the promotion of basic rights • Freedom of association • This enables the poor to organize and bargain collectively to attain adequate incomes and decent conditions of work • Social dialogue • Participation through representative workers’ organizations

18. Policy Perspectives Underlying the Decent Work Agenda • Employment Intensive Approaches to Job Creation • By focusing on income transfers to the poor, pro-poor growth strategies can succeed in attacking poverty on multiple fronts and contribute to the attainment of the MDGs. • Supporting Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship • Promoting local and domestic entrepreneurship has been proven to be an excellent method for local empowerment and wealth building.

19. Policy Perspectives Underlying the Decent Work Agenda • Training and Skills Development • Investments in skills training including entrepreneurship and vocational skills enable people to begin working out of poverty • The ILO and UNDP have launched a number of training initiatives which demonstrate that skills acquisition can lead to both improved employment opportunities and incomes.

20. Policy Perspectives Underlying the Decent Work Agenda • Supporting Small and Medium-sized Enterprises • Small enterprises account for a large share of employment in developing countries • Small and medium-sized enterprises have the ability to distribute wealth more evenly than large firms and increase economic growth. • (See Figure)

21. Policy Perspectives Underlying the Decent Work Agenda • Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) and Poverty Reduction • 95% of the working poor lack access to credit markets • In developing countries the banking sector is reluctant to loan to the small business sector owing to lack of collateral • Formal savings in developing countries are minute • Priority: Improving availability of credit • Microfinance offers a solution to these problems and is supported under the decent work agenda

22. Policy Perspectives Underlying the Decent Work Agenda • Cooperating out of Poverty • Cooperatives provide an effective model for community centered, participatory development • They facilitate pooling of community resources for sustainable development such as skills, capital, know-how, and organizational capacity. • They empower local communities • Many trade unions have set up cooperatives to provide a range of services to their members and to local communities.

23. Policy Perspectives Underlying the Decent Work Agenda • Workplace Health and Safety • Over two million workers die every year of work-related illnesses. • Accidents and health risks are associated with • Dangerous professions such as Mining • Agriculture with its use of harmful agrochemicals • Manufacturing (Lack of Protective Clothing and Equipment) • Sweatshop conditions including poor ventilation, lack of building codes, extremely long working hours

24. Policy Perspectives Underlying the Decent Work Agenda • Workplace Health and Safety • Unsafe, hazardous working conditions are a dimension of poverty that must be addressed within the context of achieving the first millennium development goal. • Trade unions, and increasingly many governments, mark the 28th of April as the day of commemoration for dead and injured workers, to raise awareness of the need to address workplace health and safety issues.

25. Promoting Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work To escape poverty, people need more than progressive policies. They need to be empowered to participate and to be represented in the decision-making processes affecting their lives. They need voice at work through their freely chosen union representatives, and through the promotion of collective bargaining.

26. Promoting Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work • Basic Rights enshrined in the ILO Declaration • on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work • Freedom of Association • Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize • Convention, 1948 (No. 87) • Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98) • The Abolition of Forced Labor • Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) • Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105)

27. Promoting Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work Basic Rights enshrined in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work Equality • Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111) • Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100) The Elimination of Child Labor • Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) • Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182)

28. Combating Feminized Poverty • Women are disproportionately affected by economic deprivation, the lack of access to resources, and the poor integration into labour markets that are dimensions of the poverty trap • Overcoming these multiple discriminations involves setting and enforcing standards and social policy at the international level, and ensuring national-level compliance. • An appropriate policy framework would include, in addition to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, the Beijing Platform for Action, and the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

29. Ending Child Labour • Nearly 250 million children are participating in the workforce, deprived of education, and lacking decent healthcare • Child labour is both a cause and a symptom of poverty. It reinforces the situation of intergenerational poverty • Ending child labour must be an integral part of the decent work agenda.It must be linked to structural changes aimed at creating sustainable job opportunities for adults. • The ICFTU has played a major role in implementing the ILO’s International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC)

30. Social Protection and Social Service Provision • Only about 10% to 25% of people in developing countries are currently covered by some sort of insurance plan. • Lack of insurance against work and life-related risks are a dimension of poverty. • The ILO has begun consulting with over 40 different countries on strategies to develop social and income security systems adapted to their individual situations.

31. Providing Quality Public Services • Privatization and user fees separate those who can pay for services and those who cannot. Both lead to deepening poverty, increased exclusion of women and children, and the marginalization of poor communities. • Health, education, water, and sanitation should remain in the public domain and be provided as quality public services with guaranteed access by all.

32. Towards a Global Partnershipto Promote the Decent Work Agenda • For local economies to be productive, they need a supportive national and global environment through this global partnership for development (MDG8), including the promotion of the Decent Work Agenda • It implies a clear role for national governments in providing an optimal regulatory environment to foster a good, socially responsible business climate. • At global level, the rules and decision making of the IFIs and the WTO should allow policy space to national governments, and should promote, not undermine national development efforts.