Intervention by India
323rd Session of Governing Body, 12-27 March, 2015
GB.323/HL/1
First Item on the Agenda of High Level Section
Global employment and social challenges: Emerging trends and role of ILO
Mr. Chairperson,
India would like to associate itself with the statements by BRICS .
The paper before us brings out a very critical relationship between economic growth and employment. As a buildup to the post 2015 SDGs, we acknowledge the increasing interactions between UN organisations as well as other international fora. We believe that ILO must take the leadership role in these interactions to ensure that decent work is integral to the policies for economic recovery and growth across various goals including the goal 8 of the SDGs.
Labour is a critical factor of production. For global economy to come out of its slow recovery pace, it is essential that the goals of employment and employability are in tune with those of industrial development and growth.
The new economic order has given rise to new forms of employment. Self-employment, rise of SMEs and migration are the new faces of labour market. Informality in today’s labour market is an undesirable yet unavoidable phenomena. We need to redefine our stance on decent work in order to address the issues in the changing scenario and to ensure the rights and welfare of the workers .
We take note of the discussions at the forum of G20. In present global scenario, when job creation continues to be primary development objective, ease of doing business and compliance must be acknowledged to be the prelude to achieve the goals of job inclusive growth.
The focus has to be on developing labour intensive industrial sector. SMEs must be supported as they are not only sources of jobs but can also be of immense importance for skilling the labour force. Income inequalities and its impact on labour productivity is also an area of great concern to all. We look forward to the discussions on SMEs, global supply chains and informality in the coming ILCs for addressing our concerns regarding share of labour income and wage growth.
While ease of doing business for the industry and investment are important to accelerate the economic growth , focus on demand responsive skill development including quality apprenticeship and enhancing the social protection are essential to safeguard the labour force from becoming vulnerable. G20 countries are talking about an integrated skill strategy to address the global demand supply and quality of jobs. We look forward to ILOs role is promoting labour mobility with skill portability.
For India, unemployment as well as raising participation especially in the female workforce are significant given our exceptionally large youth population and incidence of high level of underemployment. Skill development is therefore the backbone of our employment policy framework. We are working on supporting quality apprenticeship in SMEs of manufacturing sector. Recognition of prior learning is another initiative which not only aims at skill enhancement but also works for transition of the largely informal and expanding construction sector into formality. The integrated policy intervention to translate rural economic growth into employment and decent work opportunities also requires to focus on creating effective local job strategies to off-load the excess burden from agriculture, developing allied industries especially SMEs according to local market conditions and linking them effectively to external demand and supply chains. The approach aims towards expansion of off farm employment opportunities which are in turn an important driver of poverty reduction.
Mr. Chairman,
We look forward to ILO’s leadership role in the defining the global economic agenda which focuses on enhanced job opportunities and Decent work. A strategic partnership of national policy making agencies with ILO to provide desired technical support for the implementation of policies to achieve the goals of decent work.
Thank You
********
