Activities of the ILO Caribbean Office in Relation To

Annex E

Strategies and activities of the ILO Caribbean Office

in relation to the labour agenda of the Americas

Willi Momm, Director, ILO Caribbean Office

Introduction

In October 1997, the ILO Caribbean Office carried out consultations with a tripartite task force with a view to arriving at set of overarching objectives for whose attainment the ILO would work in the coming years. In doing so, the vital questions to be answered were: what are the most pressing problems of the region and what contribution could the ILO make for their solution? The answer that the task force arrived at gave the ILO Caribbean Office a specific mandate: it agreed that the ILO should put its strategizing, its activities and resources behind one common goal that was related to a specific historical process affecting all countries and actors in the Caribbean. This goal was to assist ILO’s tripartite constituents to better cope with the impact of globalization and trade liberalization.

This provided with this Office with a dual challenge: first, to reorient its activities from an agency-driven to a problem-driven approach and second to develop solutions that would be seen as significant for helping Caribbean countries cope with the move from closed and protected economies to open economies that had to learn to compete in order to survive.

This is a formidable task indeed that requires a major intellectual effort in order to define the new challenges and then to set in motion the necessary reforms. In doing so, it was the conviction of the ILO that solutions needed to be developed that would make participation in the global economy a positive experience for the majority of people. Consequently, the necessary adjustments would have to avoid the negative experiences of past structural adjustment programmes by linking economic with social progress. How to organize change by preserving and improving the standards of living and work became the leitmotiv of ILO’s cooperation with its tripartite constituents.

The ILO and regional integration

Concurrently with this search for solutions to dealing with globalization, the Caribbean region was engaged in a process of widening and deepening economic and social integration in the framework of the Caribbean Community. Also here the issue was – and still is – whether such integration is seen and organized as merely a free trade area or whether it also addresses the social dimension. The issue was also whether sufficient understanding could be generated among the political leadership in the Caribbean region to understand the importance of linking the two and to translate this understanding into concrete policies and legal provisions. Again, there was and is a role for the ILO to provide guidance and support in this process and consequently, we have intensified our cooperation with CARICOM in order to promote this linkage.

With the Declaration of the Hemispheric Summit in Santiago de Chile and the conclusions from the XIth Conference of Ministers of Labour in Viña del Mar yet another challenge presented itself to the countries of the Caribbean and with that also to the ILO Caribbean Office. Hemispheric integration, in order to justify its special significance compared with global economic integration, holds out the promise – or threat – of an accelerated process of trade liberalization within this trade area. However, in contrast to the WTO concept, the creation of a hemispheric trade bloc relies on a common base of convictions and rules and holds out the prospect of intensified ties and perhaps harmonization of policies among the members of such bloc. Here again, a new field of concern opened for the ILO Caribbean Office where its interest in promoting the linkage and interdependence of economic and social policy in countries of the Caribbean would be put to a new test. Of specific importance in this regard was the decision of the Santiago Summit – now renewed at the Summit in Quebec – that the ILO’s fundamental labour standards should be the social floor of the FTAA. This, in fact, ties the ILO into the hemispheric integration process in a quite prominent manner.

These considerations culminated in the desire to organize a major public debate on these issues in the Caribbean in order to raise the awareness for a greater integration of economic and social and labour policies at the national, subregional and hemispheric levels. As a result, the ILO Caribbean Office organized, in January 1999 a tripartite Symposium entitled “Labour issues in the context of economic integration and free trade” and subsequently published a book with the same title. It was the first systematic attempt to expose ministries of labour, trade, economic affairs and planning as well as employers’ organizations, workers’ organizations and the academia in this region to some of the implications of the new developments. The outcome of the discussions gave this Office further direction for organizing its activities. In fact, much of the work programme of the ILO has been inspired by that meeting and has taken shape as a systematic follow-up to the issues and conclusions presented there. Also this meeting today is part of that follow-up that has linked the work of the ILO so intrinsically with the fate of this region.

It should be mentioned that we succeeded in having at that meeting, among others, the US Secretary of Labour who gave her vision of hemispheric integration, a senior Canadian Government representative who presented her view on the labour aspects of NAFTA and representatives of the OAS who gave an overview of the FTAA integration process.

For this Office, follow-up to this meeting meant to translate the immense intellectual and political challenges provoked by the mentioned global, hemispheric and regional developments into practical and feasible strategies for strengthening the capacities of our tripartite constituents to deal with these developments in a way that would best safeguard their respective visions and aspirations. While I cannot say that we have as yet succeeded, I can say, at least, that we have tried and that we shall continue to try. However, I think that it is a fair observation when I say that, until today, the implications of both regional and hemispheric integration are still not very well understood within the circles dealing with labour policies. Local and parochial concerns still dominate the tripartite and bipartite agendas and the development of labour policy. Where the impact of globalization or economic integration is felt, reactive measures prevail that seek to preserve established standards and practices. What is still missing is a broad-based recognition for the need to develop proactive strategies and new solutions to deal with globalization and trade liberalization.

We felt that an intriguing aspect of hemispheric integration that requires appropriate responses from labour policy is whether it will establish a dynamic for what is called “upwards harmonization” or just a dynamic for facilitating the unhindered progress of free trade and achieving the least possible restrictions for obtaining returns on investment by adopting an agenda for deregulation. It appears that there is a conflicting rhetoric among those who promote the FTAA and this may give rise to some concern among those who oppose a lowering of labour conditions. The plea made by the US Secretary for Labour in 1999 to work towards upward harmonization as a prerequisite to hemispheric integration was well received in this region. However, in the meantime a sobering recognition takes place that the proponents of free trade may be less inclined to give importance to that particular policy motive and might, in fact, favour a consequent dismantling of what they consider as undue labour market rigidities, hence accept a lowering of labour conditions everywhere as a prerequisite for business expansion. It is such perceptions that have contributed to provoking the birth of a global anti-globalization movement that has found its peak in Seattle and recently in Genova.

In this somewhat ambiguous context we felt the need, not only to persuade ILO’s tripartite constituency to take a more proactive stance on hemispheric and global issues, but also to involve stakeholders from the trade negotiation side in a debate on the role of labour in hemispheric integration, not with any particular policy agenda in mind, but to raise awareness about possible implications for negotiating strategies and to generate a better understanding for the possible role labour issues could play in trade negotiations. Consequently, the ILO participated actively and presented a discussion paper in the meeting of a tripartite discussion group organized by CARICOM in April 2000 that included a representative of the Regional Negotiating Machinery and of CARICOM’s Department of Economic Affairs. However, this meeting has not yet resulted in a true dialogue between the trade and labour constituencies with a view to developing a consistent Caribbean position regarding the social clause or trade sanction issue.

On the other hand, as said before, the traditionally close cooperation between CARICOM and the ILO has further intensified and has resulted in a closer involvement and participation of CARICOM in ILO activities as well as in a closer support by the ILO Caribbean Office for the policy objectives of CARICOM and the creation of the single market and economy in particular. This very meeting today is an example of the excellent understanding and the trust that has developed over the years between our organizations and a confirmation of the fact that CARICOM considers ILO’s contribution useful for the realization of its policy objectives.

Modernization of Ministries of Labour

In anticipation of the difficulties the countries of this region would have to participate in the two Working Groups established in Viña del Mar, we felt obliged to initiate on our part a discussion in this region on the issue of modernizing ministries of labour. We did this, of course, mainly because our analysis of the impact of globalization led us to urge member governments to get better prepared for these new challenges. However, the hemispheric dimension and the fact that similar activities would have been launched in other regions of the hemisphere also played a strong role in our attempts.

Rarely is the purpose and direction of “modernization” clearly defined. From ILO’s perspective, however, modernization would have to mean to prepare Ministries of Labour for a set of new challenges, that would imply major shifts within the operations of the Ministries. In the era of globalization, the existing labour market institutions would have to take on new roles and functions and the task of protecting the rights of workers would have to take on new forms as new pressures were forming that existing regulation and enforcement were unable to adequately deal with. At the same time, the increasing role of the private sector for job creation and job security and the pressures itself was facing due to global competition would have to lead to the forging of a new public-private sector partnership, with a lead role to be taken by Ministries of Labour as a facilitator of business success.

With such an agenda in mind we commissioned as early as 1999 a study by an international consultant on modernization of labour administrations. The findings of this excellent study were discussed at various fora, both regionally and nationally, notably during the 1999 Labour Administration Conference. In early 2000 we conducted a survey among Ministers of Labour of the Caribbean region, including its overseas countries and territories, with a view to finding out about the various policy priorities, competencies and responsibilities of the various ministries and departments of labour. The findings of this study were presented to the ILO meeting of Ministers of Labour in April 2000. It identified major discrepancies regarding what ministers felt their ministries should do and what they actually were doing. The survey basically showed that the labour ministries/departments were quite strong on labour relations matters, not so strong on labour policy and legislation/enforcement and quite weak on labour market policy. As a result of these discussions, the ministers established a ministerial task force in order to develop recommendations for the modernization of labour ministries. This task force met under the auspices of the ILO in Port of Spain in January 2001 and produced a set of recommendations. This report will be discussed next month at the ILO Labour Administration Conference in Antigua. These developments, including modernization efforts undertaken in the last years by several governments, were also reflected in the report on the ILO study that we heard just now.

In addition to this work which focussed on roles, functions and responsibilities of ministries of labour, the ILO, in the framework of its project PROMALCO (which stands for the promotion of management-worker cooperation) is currently conducting a study that will look into the possibilities of instituting organizational and management reforms in order to make ministries of labour more into a client serving organization, the clients being both labour and management, individually and collectively. As we experience a new validation of the role of labour in industry, there is a new opportunity out there to give the term “labour” in the title of these Ministries a new meaning, more in the sense of empowerment than merely in terms of protection.

We expect to present comprehensive recommendations to the forthcoming meeting of Ministers of Labour in April 2002 and will include in that information also findings from efforts made by the ILO in other regions of the Southern Hemisphere.

Social dialogue

Our efforts to promote social dialogue in a prominent way go back to our 1997 regional objective statement, but built, in fact on a long tradition of tripartism in the Caribbean region at the national and regional levels. They were intensified lately by both the refocusing of the ILO’s mandate, which included social dialogue as one of ILO’s core objectives, but also by the need to find a proactive way to deal with the new challenges of globalization and hemispheric integration. We believed that in the Caribbean, the transformation from closed economies built on protection and privileges to open economies building on economic performance and competitiveness would require a strengthening and refocusing of social dialogue. We also saw a new resolve among the social partners for the need to create a new foundation for dealing with the expected shake-up of established policies, practices, institutions, in particular by improving the relations among themselves. A new recognition took ground that in the face of globalization, all are somehow sitting in the same boat. There was also a new resolve on their part to develop a better capacity to influence economic and social policy.