Global March Against Child Labour. Hearing on Child Labour in Developing Countries, European Parliament 27 April 2010

Transcription

1 Global March Against Child Labour Hearing on Child Labour in Developing Countries, European Parliament 27 April 2010 Presentation Notes, Nick Grisewood, Executive Director Institutional background The Global March Against Child Labour is a global coalition of like-minded organisations and institutions from the trade union movement, teachers organisations, civil society organisations, academia and others which are united in the aim to protect and promote the rights of all children, especially the right to receive a free, meaningful education and to be free from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be harmful to their physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and Education International (EI) are members of our governing board and we are therefore very much aligned in our policies and programmes. In passing, we would like just to comment on how unfortunate it is that the trade unions and indeed the social partners are not among the speakers on these panels as the main stakeholders in issues focusing on core labour standards and on the policy coherence debate, particularly in terms of Education For All. Global March is a founding member of the Global Campaign for Education, seeing education as a vital means of giving vulnerable children a better start in life and supporting the Education For All goals and the Millennium Development Goal on education. Our approach is therefore based on three fundamental pillars: the elimination and prevention of child labour; education for all children, particularly those hardest to reach; and poverty alleviation. Over time, Global March has earned the respect of a broad range of partners, including ILO-IPEC and UNICEF present here today, which is reflected through our participation in high-level international forums dealing with child labour and education issues. We are a member of the Global Task Force on Child Labour and Education and of the Consultative Group that was established to work with the organisers of the Global Conference on Child Labour being held in The Hague from 10 to 11 May. Thematic comments The issue of elimination/prevention of child labour through trade-related measures has attracted significant attention over recent years. Indeed, the focus on trade and how it can promote social, labour and environmental standards has spawned an entire business sector of its own. Work in this sector is based on fundamental standards established in relevant international conventions and mechanisms. For the purposes of this hearing, the focus will be on those standards relating to children s rights and protection. However, it is vital to keep in mind that the issue of child labour is an integral element of the bigger picture of poverty alleviation, human development and decent work principles. Child labour has to be tackled through holistic approaches that target any issue that affects children s development, including household poverty, social and cultural norms, education, social protection, and employment. Therefore, a comprehensive policy and legislative framework, set within efforts to bring about social change, is paramount and will be dealt with in more detail in the second panel. But, the same holistic vision has to apply to the issue of trade and how improving trade and business practices can impact on child labour. CSR as a core business practice I will focus mainly on the issue of CSR in my presentation. The major drawback of CSR approaches is that they are often reactive. In most cases, companies react to major international media investigations of supply chains which reveal some form of violation of core labour standards, including the presence of working children. For example, cocoa and chocolate, bananas, tobacco, 1

2 football-stitching and garments. Something happens which leads to a flurry of PR activity to launch counter-strategies showing immediate efforts to overcome what happened and turn it into a positive outcome. In many ways, CSR departments are the fire-fighters in a company, employing a crisismanagement strategy. One has to wonder whether it wouldn t be easier and less costly in many ways to simply be doing the right things in the first place. Many companies now have codes of conduct for employees, suppliers, contractors and subcontractors. These usually refer to social, labour and environmental standards. The challenge is in translating the code into practice through effective enforcement practices and making sure that the code becomes a core element of business practice and not just the work of a department or even an individual. It has to permeate all aspects of the company and its practices and policies. Most large multinationals produce Social Audits now, or CSR reports in some form or another. These report on their monitoring activities and community programmes or support to local charities, civil society programmes, and so on. CSR in many ways has become another marketing tool. But the issue of monitoring and compliance can become a major challenge for local suppliers who, depending on their location and sector activity, can find themselves bombarded with monitoring and audit requests from different companies at different times, but effectively all doing the same thing. For example, one company might produce the same type of good for different Western companies and may be subject to monitoring from each of them which may all differ in subtle ways and which have an impact on the company. Lessons learned over time There are several lessons that have been learned over time in the arena of CSR: The need to explore the possibility of streamlining monitoring and auditing programmes and approaches in such a way as to try and make sense of the sea of voluntary standards, codes of conduct and other initiatives. This requires a mapping of what already exists, analysis of what works and what does not, and a multi-stakeholder approach on how to ensure knowledge and lessons learned to develop the most effective and efficient systems possible. The need for the application of core labour standards to become part of the core business practices of companies, not as part of some marketing or positive incentives approach, but because it is the law most countries and part of their commitment to the international conventions they have ratified. Companies should not be rewarded for conforming to legal requirements. This means that core labour standards should be respected as a matter of course and not in reaction to negative media publicity. (Internal monitoring) Business practices for the implementation of policies and guidelines should be linked with state labour inspectoral systems where these exist to create sustained pressure on labour inspectorates to deliver. Clearly this will imply investment in strengthening and expanding state systems and building capacity. In order to reinforce sustainability of monitoring and auditing systems, these capacities need to become embedded at local and national level. It is not sustainable to continue to rely on private systems and these systems also need to be monitored themselves. Business policies and practices should be linked to national and local laws in so far as these are consistent with international core labour standards. (External monitoring) Who monitors the monitors? What standards and certification systems are in place for initiatives and those who implement and follow them up? There are some training programmes in Social Accountability SA 8000, for example, but not all, and there needs to be a more regulated approach in this sector. Integral to workplace monitoring and inspection is the role and responsibility of the democratic trade union movement. Trade unions are fundamental to the application and enforcement of core labour standards, including the elimination and prevention of child labour, and the promotion of decent work. However, they are not always partners in monitoring and auditing approaches indeed they may be deliberately excluded in some cases and these approaches should not be used as a way to undermine social dialogue mechanisms, including through the establishment of company-based and often company-controlled unions. In addition, the concept of social dialogue 2

3 is not always well understood by social partners, reinforcing the need to accompany these initiatives with capacity-building efforts for the social partners and also investment in institutional development. There is a key role for the ITUC, Global Union Federations and international employers organisations and federations in this respect. Monitoring needs to be applied throughout the entire supply chain including the informal sector to ensure that core labour standards, including child labour elimination and prevention, are applied throughout. For example, approaches within the garment sector should examine goods from the production of fibres and textiles, such as cotton farming, to outsourced value-added activities, such as hand-stitching and embroidery. This is a major challenge due to the complexity of informal sub-contractors and often the vast geographical areas to be covered. If cotton is farmed in one place, the fabric manufactured in another, the cutting and stitching in another and the hand-embroidery in another then what does the label actually cover and how is the monitoring coordinated? Monitoring and auditing must include significant awareness creation and capacity-building throughout the supply chain, including sub-contracting and outsourcing, on core labour standards, including child labour. Approaches should be multi-stakeholder which should include giving a voice to the vulnerable workers and communities affected to ensure that effective and sustainable remediation and rehabilitation programmes are in place, particularly for child labourers, withdrawing them from workplaces and transitioning them to school and/or training programmes. Sustainability is crucial and this demands links to state resources and programmes, particularly in terms of remediation and rehabilitation, for example, education for all and ensuring access to vital public services. Programmes put in place with the support of development or related aid, but that do not work within the broader national development frameworks supported by state resources are not sustainable. Is it responsible to raise the expectations of vulnerable groups, particularly children, in developing and providing alternative activities, such as education and/or training, which cannot be sustained in the long-term? Monitoring, auditing, CSR or compliance initiatives should aim to focus on geographical areas rather than sectors only. This is particularly important in locations where there may be multiple economic activities. For example, in the case of a location like Sialkot in Pakistan, there are manufacturing companies in a wide range of supply areas including textiles, sporting goods such as hand-stitched footballs, surgical instruments and then domestic products, such as brick kilns. It is quite possible that an initiative to monitor core labour standards in one sector may result in children moving from that sector and appearing in another where similar monitoring is not being applied. Therefore, the concept of child labour free zones or areas should have more impact through simultaneous targeting of economic sectors linked to the strengthening and expansion of vital public services, particularly education, health and social protection. The role and responsibility of multinational companies A further challenge facing the implementation of CSR approaches applying core labour standards is the need to ensure that the roles of multinationals are clearly stated and that they give full support to the processes involved and the outcome of development. Investing in enhanced business practice systems, linked to improved labour standards, has an inevitable upward effect on production costs. It is part of development and there is no better example of this than the European Union. As socioeconomic standards improve, cost of living and production increases. Therefore, who will absorb these costs? If domestic producers are expected to absorb the costs, then they will lose profitability on already often quite slim margins. But if they try to increase sale prices, they may lose business. From a simplistic perspective, multinational buyers remain in a position of strength and may not agree to pay higher prices, indicating possible moves of sourcing to cheaper production areas. In such cases, the objectives of these initiatives may fail with those who invested in improvements (domestic suppliers), with their workers, families and communities the main losers. Companies must be held to stringent agreements which ensure that those who invest in improved standards do not lose out when their costs increase. Otherwise, the race to the bottom in terms of labour and social standards will become a reality. 3

4 There has to be a balance here, though, in terms of incentivising improvement of standards. Companies should do this anyway within the legal and labour standards framework it is all part of socio-economic development. But, fundamental labour standards should not be negotiated on the backs of workers with multinationals on one side demanding lower purchase prices and domestic suppliers on the other hand giving in to lower prices by cutting back on standards. Multinationals have a major responsibility in this area. Closing remarks In closing, Global March would like to emphasise the importance of social auditing and monitoring initiatives. Indeed, it is involved in one such initiative of its own in the garment sector in India at present. Such initiatives are a vital cog in the development wheel. However, there should a stronger focus on the longer term perspective in terms of ensuring sustainability of workplace inspection across the length and breadth of supply chains. Agriculture continues to be a challenging area for the development community and for monitoring and auditing initiatives. The bulk of child labour remains in this sector, around 70 per cent, which calls for greater efforts to be made in terms of resources and collaboration between stakeholders. There exists an international partnership on cooperation on child labour in agriculture which includes the ILO, the FAO, the producers, the trade unions and research institutions. We hope that this partnership grows in strength as its work is crucial and that it links with other initiatives in the farming sector. In brief on some related issues and on the European Commission s Staff Working Document on Combating Child Labour: Labelling initiatives These have had a positive impact and there will be a colleague from the UTZ certification programme talking on this issue, as regards cocoa farming. This is particularly important given the high incidence of child labour in this sector, in spite of ongoing multistakeholder initiatives to try and tackle the issue. Labelling has grown massively in the west within the development of ethical consumerism, Fairtrade being one, UTZ another (refer to publication written for ICTU), Rugmark, and so on. Some focus on sustainable farming, non-use of chemicals, community development, environmental standards, labour standards, recycling, organic products, sustainable energy, and so on. Some are holistic and focus on all. They do a very important job in terms of raising awareness, building compliance and supporting development. So companies and governments are sitting up and taking notice they have to as consumer power has grown so significantly. It is vital that development and trade-related initiatives do not work in a vacuum. This will be dealt with more in the next panel. But there is a significant number of programmes and initiatives that take place in any one time in different developing countries. Many of these can inter-relate with each other and identify areas of mutual support. It is not always a question of more funding, but spending smarter what is available through these different programmes. There needs to be a growing focus on integration and coherence and that applies to us all: governments, donors, civil society, private individuals, companies, and so on. Child labour cuts across many development areas and the MDGs, and therefore it has to be integrated explicitly into other development and aid frameworks. Section 8.3 of the Commission s Staff document refers to the list of goods that is produced by the US Department of Labour on the use of forced child labour in the production of certain goods. This list also invites public contributions through a public hearing process. However, this list could lead to boycotts because the public will read the list and might assume that such a product has been made with child labour and therefore will not buy it. Some consumer web sites do promote consumer boycotts of products that they consider unethical. What is to stop such an organisation referring to the USDOL list? The intention behind the list was not for this purpose and we appreciate that but it is there nonetheless. 4

5 Section 10.2 of the Commission s document includes a reference to the football-stitching project in Sialkot, Pakistan. The Sialkot project had a successful impact on the football-stitching industry, there is no doubt, and the involvement of the ILO was key. However, it also presented significant potential for a follow-up initiative which could have involved all economic sectors in Sialkot (and there are many) to ensure that violations of core labour standards were not transferred from one sector to another. More could have been done in the field of social dialogue, particularly in the sustainable development of a trade union presence in Sialkot and an understanding of the mechanism and processes by the social partners. A district-wide initiative, linked to the work already done in the surgical instruments sector, could have had a major and more sustainable impact. This concept of child labour free zones or areas which I referred to earlier is described in a Global March policy paper on supply chain monitoring. Two further points of interest for Global March: much of the research and focus of CSR tends to be around major multinational corporations and big brand names, but what of the growing number of SMEs across Europe which are sourcing products and services in developing countries? To what extent is the growth being monitored and guidance and monitoring being applied to smaller firms? In addition, to what extent are companies based in industrialised countries being monitored for violations of core labour standards, particular child labour, and are they having sanctions taken against them? Can their countries of domestic registration take action against them if they are found to have child labour in their supply chains? Could a system of penalty clauses be instituted? The focus should not only be on GSP penalising suppliers to the EU, but also those which source goods and services in developing countries. It would be difficult, complicated and complex to do but does that mean it should not happen? I would like to close with a couple of references to the vital hoped-for outcomes of the Global Conference next month in The Hague. The first concerns the need for donors and international organisations to invest significantly increased resources in the development and strengthening of the so-called worldwide movement against child labour. This issue is mentioned time and again in documents and declarations but it does not happen in reality. One of the main reasons why the EFA initiative has become so prominent and made such progress has been the establishment of the Global Campaign for Education as the civil society and trade union partner in this goal. It has been successful in mobilising significant resources which has considerably strengthened its role and position, including as a public watchdog of the EFA and Fast Track Initiative processes. The challenge with the child labour effort is that it does not enjoy the same profile as education as it does not figure as an MDG in itself even though it is linked to most of them. Therefore, there is no major development mechanism like EFA and FTI to ensure a global strategic plan, underpinned by a coherent resource plan. Child labour programmes are often ad hoc and dependent on success in various calls for project applications, although ILO-IPEC enjoys some regular funding from the US government. However, the funding pot is ridiculously small and there is not enough to go around. As a result, programmes for the worldwide movement are disparate, incoherent, disjointed and insufficient. If the international community and the EU in that regard are serious about child labour elimination and prevention, then there needs to be a comprehensive review of funding mechanisms, particularly for the worldwide movement. Global March had hoped to include such a reference in the conference document and will continue to push for this to happen, otherwise the goal set by the ILO Global Plan of Action to eliminate worst forms of child labour by 2016 is not going to be achieved and the date will be put off once we reach that year. And think about this, a study commissioned by ILO-IPEC in 2004, entitled Investing in every child, looked at the estimated costs of each element of the programme to eliminate child labour, the projected economic gains from eliminating child labour and replacing it with education. The generic model necessarily hypothetical in its approach concluded that the benefits of eliminating child labour would be nearly seven times greater than the costs, or an estimated US$5.1 trillion in the developing and transitional economies, where most child labourers are found. Moreover, child labour 5

6 could be eliminated and replaced by universal primary education by 2015 (MDG 2) and universal lower secondary education by 2020 at an estimated total cost of US$760 billion. The study applies a model to developing and transitional economies worldwide and projects that all regions of the world would experience large net gains from the elimination of child labour, although in the initial years, the costs would almost certainly exceed returns. However, net economic flows would turn dramatically positive as the effects of improved education and health take hold. By 2020, costs would be far outweighed by the returns, leaving annual benefits of around US$60 billion. Thank you for your attention. 6