Don't attract investments at the cost of workers: ILO

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, OCT. 31. The International Labour Organisation is anxious to ensure that developing countries, in their eagerness to attract investment in Export Processing Zones (EPZs), do not indulge in a ``race to the bottom at the expense of workers'', according to senior ILO officials.

It will be an illusion if denial of basic rights like freedom of association embodied in Convention 87 of the ILO and right to organise and collective bargaining contained in Convention 98 helps to improve the competitiveness and investment climate in any country because it is not cheap labour but cost of labour per unit of output and other factors which count for enlightened investors, who are the ultimate winners in the global market, the ILO officials emphasised here today.

The ILO was motivated by the need for ensuring the ``human dignity'' of workers, enabling them to exercise their basic rights in the present stage of globalisation and was not involved with the World Trade Organisation or any other body in linking trade and labour standards. In fact, the ILO specifically had expressed itself against attempts to use its labour standards as a protectionist strategy.

Participating in the first day's proceedings at a three-day subregional workshop on ``promoting social dialogue and freedom of association in the EPZs in South Asia'', Ms. Anne Trebilcock, Director-Reporting and Research, ILO, Geneva, and Mr. Coen Compier, ILO Specialist on Labour Standards, New Delhi, pointed out that even those countries (including India and the U.S.) which had not ratified Conventions 87 and 98 were bound by the June 1998 ``ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and Its Follow-Up'' to observe in spirit the principles which formed the core of the its objectives and to report to it periodically on progress.

Discussions at the workshop, in which representatives of the Government, trade unions and employers, besides economists and NGOs, from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka participated, focussed on the exclusion of EPZ workers from certain national labour laws in Pakistan and Bangladesh and the ``public utility'' status on EPZ units in India which constrained the workers' right to direct action.

The ILO officials, including Mr. A. Sivananthiran, senior specialist in industrial relations, ILO-South Asia Multidisciplinary Team, New Delhi, said denial of workers' rights had not led to industrial peace in the EPZs. Bangladesh, which was implementing a labour standards programme with U.S. assistance, had promised to restore full national laws in its EPZs by 2004, while Pakistan had promised to do the same by 2000 but had not reported officially the progress made.

In Sri Lanka, the ILO was helping Labour Ministry officials have a dialogue with the Sri Lanka Board of Investments to ensure that the former carried out its mandate within EPZs.

As for India, the ILO officials felt that the status of ``public utility'' granted to the EPZ units was on a par with that of ``essential services'' and was unjustified.

However, a representative of employers in the Madras EPZ said this provision was a mechanism of ``conflict resolution'' in as much as it mandated the launch of conciliation proceedings at the official level in case of any industrial dispute in the EPZs.

If the conciliation process failed, there would be no legal bar on workers resorting to direct action, he pointed out.

The ILO officials said the organisation was concerned at trade unions' failure to encourage leadership among women, though they constituted the bulk of the workforce in most EPZs.

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