Statement by India on Agenda item 6, Point 3 - Social Dialogue and Tripartism during the 107th session of International Labour Conference 2018
(Geneva, Switzerland)
A recurrent discussion on the strategic objective of social dialogue and tripartism, under the follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization, 2008
Point 3: How can ILO action on social dialogue be improved?
Thank you Chair.
2. India recognizes ILO’s efforts and actions to promote social dialogue.
First and foremost, ILO should continue to provide technical assistance for ratification and implementation of relevant international labour standards and continue to provide cutting-edge policy advice to constituents.
3. ILO should work to strengthen the traditional tripartism, incorporating the views of the other actors such as the civil society and NGOs on the matters related to world of work. Informal workers comprise of large segment of the workforce in many developing countries. Given the nature of the contractual relationship and the sector they are engaged in, the informal workers are often excluded from the process and scope of social dialogue at all levels. ILO may concentrate its efforts in this direction and provide technical assistance to the constituents for dealing with the issue of informality in their countries including through sharing of best practices amongst countries.
4. ILO in its spirit of promoting the UN agenda should be cautious of the approach it uses and should continue to follow its mandate. The mechanism of social dialogue and tripartism should be used before endorsing any report or promoting/using any terminology which is different from those contained in its rich body of labour standards.
5. Globalization, has widened the scope of multinational enterprises (MNEs). At the same time, social actors such as trade unions have remained mostly at the national level. The role of cross border tripartism has to be seen in this context. 6. However we would reiterate that ILO must work with the members for capacity development of the constituents in a manner that it does not create conflict with the sovereign status and institutions of member countries .
7. In the age of technological revolution, it is important to keep pace with it. It makes information sharing and dissemination a lot simple. ILO should strengthen the capacity of the trade unions to enable them to efficiently use the available technological tools and platforms particularly to get the fragmented workforce of informal sectors such as homebased workers, and new age workers in non-standard forms of employment.
8. We want ILO to intensify its research to understand the nature of interrelationships in gig and platform economies so that next course of action can be decided. It would not be prudent to chalk on the course of action unless we have sufficient information and empirical evidence to endorse the same.
9. We look forward to working with ILO and the tripartite constituents on this initiatives.
I thank you chair.
30 May 2018
