Report: Global Unions statement to the IMF and World Bank

Abstract

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 23 Volume 23 Issue 1 2016 Global Unions’ full statement is at: http://www.ituc -csi.org/statement -by-global-unions -to-the-17170 I n a statement to the 2016 Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank held in Washington on 15-17 April 2016, the Global Unions strongly criticised the policies of both international financial institutions, particularly with regard to labour protections. The Global Unions group comprises the ITUC, as well as the BWI, EI, IAEA, IFJ, Industriall, ITF, IUF, PSI, UNI, and the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the OECD. The statement specifically criticises the IMF and the World Bank’s systematic overestimation of the rate of recovery of the global economic since the financial crisis of 2008-9, their inconsistent approaches to addressing inequality, promotion of labour market flexibility, and failures to implement robust labour safeguards in development lending operations. The Global Unions further issued a series of recommendations focusing on improving the institutions support for public investment, social protections, energy efficiency and transition, stronger protection of labour rights, and comprehensive measures towards the effective regulation of the financial sector and tax transparency. The extracts below detail the Global Union’s position with regard to labour rights. Implementation of a robust World Bank labour safeguard Global Unions have urged the World Bank to require that its projects are in compliance with the International Labour Organisation’s core labour standards (CLS) starting in 1998, when it became a de facto condition of ILO membership for countries to adhere to the standards. Other multilateral development banks preceded the World Bank by requiring that the activities they finance comply with the CLS, as well as minimum occupational health and safety requirements, obligations to provide information to workers and some other working conditions. Trade unions, other civil society organisations and many governments urged the World Bank to adopt labour standard requirements as part of the review and update of its Environmental and Social Framework, commonly known as safeguards , that it began in 2012. A first draft of the new framework was made public in July 2014. In August 2015, the Bank released a second draft of its proposed new safeguards policy that followed extensive consultations on the first proposal . The revised draft of the labour safeguard contained many improvements on the version released a year earlier, which those who had supported the adoption of a labour safeguard criticised for its serious flaws. For example, the first draft had excluded contract or sub-contracted workers from any protection, even though this category of workers may be particularly subject to abuse and often constitutes the vast majority of workers in Bank-financed infrastructure projects. The draft of August 2015 included coverage of these workers. However, some important weaknesses remain in the most recent draft labour safeguard. Chief among these are the lack of any reference to the ILO standards upon which the CLS are based and insufficient protection of workers who exercise their freedom of association against acts of discrimination or reprisal. In both these areas, the latest draft does not meet the standards of the labour safeguards adopted by other development banks. The ITUC and its Global Unions partners submitted written suggestions to the World Bank for correcting the remaining flaws and presented them during the last round of public consultations that ended in March. They also called on the Bank to adopt effective means and procedures for implementing the new safeguard and monitoring its application. Global Unions have urged the World Bank’s private-sector lending arm IFC, which has applied ‘Performance Standard 2: Labour and Working Conditions’ (PS 2) as a borrowing requirement since 2006, to implement the recommendations of a May 2015 investigation report issued by its Compliance Advisor Ombudsman. The CAO report, which concerned a loan made to a Colombian borrower, found fault with IFC for proceeding with loan disbursements despite having corroborated information it received more than a year before from trade unions and the ILO showing that the firm’s labour practices were in clear violation of PS 2. The CAO also criticised IFC for not compelling the firm to divulge assessments and action plans concerning its labour practices...