“Leaders have to look at jobs as the center of economic growth,” said the ITUC’s Burrow, with Mark Allen (left) and Stephen Pursey (photo: Ludwig Schöpp)
TRADE UNION DIALOGUE
Representatives of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), European Trade Union Confederation, and national unions met with IMF and ILO officials for three days in Vienna, Austria, to review the employment situation in Europe and to assess progress over the past half year to more closely coordinate the work of the two international organizations. Labor leaders from Austria, Bulgaria, Ireland, Latvia, and Romania participated in the “Dialogue on Growth and Employment in Europe.”
The September 2010 Oslo Conference—hosted by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway and co-sponsored by the IMF and ILO—brought together leaders from government, labor, business, and academia to tackle the sharp increase in unemployment and underemployment since the global financial crisis. At Oslo, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and ILO Director General Juan Somavia called for a broad international commitment to a jobs-focused policy response to the global downturn.
In Vienna, there was a consensus that the international response—particularly among the advanced economies—has fallen short of what is needed to tackle the jobs crisis. “The unemployment rate grew sharply during the crisis and is coming down far too slowly,” said Mark Allen, head of the IMF Regional Office for Eastern and Central Europe in Warsaw, Poland, speaking at a public symposium. “The issue needs to be kept in front of the G-20, and the IMF will do that.”
“Leaders have to look at jobs as the center of economic growth,” said Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary, who also led the labor delegation at the Oslo Conference. “They have to look at investment as something achieved through wages. That’s why there is optimism about the ILO and IMF working together. They are not afraid of dialogue with workers to find solutions to the problems we all face.”
Stephen Pursey, Director of the ILO Policy Integration Department, said that a policy package that can help achieve growth with higher levels of employment needs to include active labor market policies to keep more workers in their jobs during a downturn; assistance for the small and medium enterprises that generate the bulk of new employment; social protection floor polices to assist the most vulnerable; minimum wages; broad adherence to collective bargaining arrangements; and labor contract laws that contain job-security guarantees that rise gradually with tenure in a job.
The Vienna meeting also assessed the areas of collaboration that Strauss-Kahn and Somavia agreed to pursue at Oslo, including
• a focus on policies to promote employment-creating growth;
• joint analytical work on social protection floor policies; and
• an agreement on the importance of social dialogue to build the consensus needed to tackle the adjustment challenges posed by the financial crisis.
The ILO and IMF have pursued cooperation in these areas in several ways. The work on employment-creating growth has focused on the G-20 process, with the two organizations contributing analytical work to the Mutual Assessment Process. The work on social protection floor policies will center on joint analytical work in countries in three regions. And the commitment to social dialogue will revolve around consultations with unions and other social partners in a number of countries.
Strauss-Kahn has also accepted an invitation from Somavia to attend the meeting of the ILO Governing Body in June to give a keynote address, at which point he will offer an assessment of the work in the post-Oslo period.
The ITUC’s participation at Vienna was part of a much broader interaction of the Fund and the labor movement that takes place at the country, regional, and international level. A significant majority of IMF country teams include union meetings as a regular part of their interaction with stakeholders, and union meetings have become much more common in consultations on country programs. In addition, Fund staff members often participate in regional union meetings organized by the ITUC—most recently in Mozambique, Senegal, Singapore, and Togo. And Strauss-Kahn regularly meets with union leaders under the auspices of the ITUC and often in the context of G-20 meetings. Last June he addressed the ITUC’s Global Congress in Vancouver, Canada. In January, the ITUC met with IMF and World Bank officials as part of an annual consultation process.
