Active Parntership – a constructive ILO approach / Björn Grünwald

Democracy has a tendency to become its own enemy. Oh, it looks very good on the drawing board, but remains a dubious proposition to manage in real life. Difficult enough when applied locally, attempting it nationally brings out many imperfections and imbalances. And internationally – well, welcome to the UN!

The ILO was conceived as a reaction and also an alternative to the violence that increasingly spilled over from military use into civilian society during the Great War. So much so that this became a first priority when discussions commenced after the Armistice, to provide instruments to handle conflicts, as an alternative to violence. An alternative to the Russian Revolution, as it were.

Only that the ILO was not invited to apply its principles in that part of the world, even though the Soviet Union eventually did become a member, finding the ILO a useful venue for its general political ambitions. So, eventually, ILO became one major theater of the Cold War.

Only after 70 years, with the collapse of communism, was there an opportunity for a constructive alternative. ILO reacted very rapidly, and already in early 1992 proposed an Active Partnership approach, offering advice and assistance to the countries which embarked on the very complicated process of transition from failed planned economies and totalitarian regimes, to democracy and market economy.

To handle this, a Multidisciplinary Team was organized and seven senior experts recruited to act as emissaries to, to begin with, sixteen of these nations. The very first projects – for Russia, Bulgaria and Ukraine – were launched already during 1992, as the Team was being brought together. It was decided to locate the Team to Budapest, where it opened for business in January 1993. This was a major feat, getting something up and running within a two-year regular budget period – easy maybe in a company but indeed not in a slow-moving international organization of the UN family. Unfortunately, this meant that there could not be any major funds allocated for our first year, just enough to cover office costs, salaries and some travel expenses, but even this was indeed a great achievement.

Yet, we were in business and set our sights for the following biennium.  Except that the very success of this initiative made the ILO member nations take notice, and demand their own MDT’s. Which meant that we had to share what funds could be set aside with nine other such Teams worldwide, which left us almost as poor as before. And on top of this, in 1994 the US Congress could not agree on their federal budget, which also prevented them from paying their 25% share of all UN operations, which in turn effectively blocked any hope for expanding the operations of our MDT. Stalemate.

So, seven experts attempting to cover sixteen Central and Eastern European nations in transition, plus backstopping support to a further eight in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, with almost no funds available for major projects?  After three years of such homeopathic efforts, if even that, we were totally exhausted, and almost ready to give up. Then it was time for an ILO regional Conference for Europe, late 1995, which was held in Warsaw.

Our Team, the Central and Eastern European Multidisciplinary Team or CEET, was invited. We went, convinced that we would be massively criticized for poor delivery both by the 26 countries we were assigned to support, and by the 24 other European countries.  To our utter surprise and dismay, we were instead unanimously praised by all three constituents of all our 26 nations, and generally applauded by the remaining 24!

How was this possible? Well, we were seen as the only major international agency that was seriously attempting to meet our constituents in their countries, working together and prepared to listen to them and their arguments, rather than just going there to tell them what to do. In the evaluation of the Active Partnership Policy that the ILO Governing Body undertook after five years, this was convincingly expressed by the vice Prime Minister of Ukraine who stated that each ILO dollar to them was worth more than ten World Bank dollars precisely because the CEET really paid attention to their priorities, and listened to them.

So, happy end? Well, not quite – even though much was indeed achieved during these first few years of the ILO pioneering dialogue with half a continent that had experienced the very fabric of their societies come apart at the seams.

Many mistakes were made, by the ILO and other actors, but much was indeed also achieved in the first few years when everything was possible, because there was then no established rule of what to do, and how to do it.

Or in the words of the first Polish minister of industry ‘it’s just a matter of re-creating the beautiful aquarium from what’s left of the fish soup the communists made of it when they took over!’

Grace Sampson: 50 years’ service / H.F. Rossetti

Grace joined the staff of the London Branch Office on New Year’s Day of 1926. She had reached the age of 16 years exactly four weeks earlier. She retired on the last day of 1975 and on that day, she completed fift y years’ unbroken service with the lLO, all at the London Branch Office. If at Headquarters, or any other out-stationed Office, there is, or ever has been, any servant of the Organisation with a record of long service equal to this, I should be very much surprised. I shall .also be surprised if her record is ever again equaled.

In 1926 Albert Thomas was still Director, which means that Grace Sampson served in the London Office under every one of the DGs. When David Morse was Director-General, he arranged for her to be invited to Geneva on official mission during the session of the Conference in June 1967. This was in recognition of her long and devoted service. And yet she continued to work for another eight years.

Mrs. Sampson had left London on mission on two previous occasions. In 1945 she was in Copenhagen from 15 November to 1 December as a member of the Secretariat at the Meeting of the Maritime Preparatory Technical Conference. The following year she was in Brussels from 14 November to 3 December serving successively as a member of the Office staff at the first session of the Textiles Committee and, immediately afterwards, at the first session of the Building, Civil Engineering and Public Works Committee. She thus had a very early opportunity to acquire first­hand knowledge of the new postwar development of ILO activities, in the shape of Industrial Committees.

The great bulk of Mrs. Sampson’s work was, of course, done in the London Branch Office. This does not mean that she stayed in the same place. The office to which the 16-year-old girl reported on 1 January 1926 (New Year’s Day was not then an office holiday) was at 26 Buckingham Gate, near Buckingham Palace. Later “homes” of the London Branch Office in which she served were in Victoria Street, Parliament Street, Piccadilly, and then, for her final year of service, New Bond Street. In addition to these offices, and literally more like a “home” than the others, was the Director’s country home at Rudgwick in Sussex, where the staff established itself for several years during the Second World War after the Victoria Street office was bombed. The daughter of the local doctor was, Grace tells me, recruited to help out with the typing when necessary. I first saw Mrs. Sampson when visiting Mr. Burge, who was then Director, for a weekend during this period of wartime exile.

Mr. Burge was the second and much the longest-serving of the Directors of the Branch Office (1924-1945). Mrs. Sampson worked for him for almost 20 years after joining the staff in 1926. Later she served under Mr. Robbins, Mr. Pickford, Mr. G. A. Johnson (on his short migration from Headquarters to London), Sir Guildhaume Myrddin-Evans, and Mr. Slater.

I took over from Mr. Slater on All Fools’ Day of 1970. Grace Sampson had by then completed her forty-fourth year of service and it would not be surprising if she looked on me with a slightly weary eye – the seventh Director she had worked for! (Even Grace had not arrived at the London Office in time to work for the very first Director, way back in 1920, J.E. Herbert.)

But if her eye was slightly weary, I got no suggestion of its being so. She was, and always remained, full of energy and enthusiasm. She had, by the time of my arrival, graduated from the girl-clerk of 1926 to the librarian, but she was a librarian with a difference. Her capacious memory and long experience made catalogues and card-indexes and such devices for helping the ill-informed quite unnecessary. She was of invaluable help to all inquirers after truth who visited the London Office, or who wrote, or who telephoned, provided it was ILO truth that they were after.

She occasionally gazed briefly into the middle distance where memories have their being, or glanced quickly over the shelves, before saying: “I think this report on Food Consumption and Dietary Surveys in the Americas presented by the ILO to the Eleventh Pan American Sanitary Conference held in Rio de Janeiro in 1942 might help you in your inquiries.”

Of course, there were times when neither the middle distance, nor the shelves, yielded answers to the strange requests for information put by visitors, and we had to have recourse to HQ.

Her departure on 31 December 1975, after 50 years of devoted work was a sad day for the London Office and the ILO as a whole. We shall not know ourselves without Grace to refer conundrums to and to help us in all the innumerable ways that have come so naturally to her kindly disposition.

Whether the Organisation will ever have a longer-serving official seems, as I said at the start, doubtful: it could not have one who will take more interest in its work or serve it more devotedly and well.

(First published in ILO World, January 1976)

100 years (nearly): ILO’s efforts to protect performers’ rights Coping with technological change – in a nutshell / Sally Christine Cornwell

A little known chapter in ILO’s history has been its continuing effort to protect the rights of performing artists (those associated with music, acting, audio-visual works etc). Until the technology for capturing or “fixing” performances in films or on records (phonograms) was perfected, performances were live and remuneration was mostly regulated between the performers and those who hired them.

With the development and increased use and distribution of recordings and films in the 1920s, performers became increasingly concerned about being paid for the repeated copying and use of their works. Moreover they felt entitled to protect the integrity of their works – a moral right.  Whereas authors had international laws protecting copyright dating from the late 1880s, no similar protection existed for performers. From the 1920s the ILO recognized that performers were workers who should be remunerated not only for their original performance but for any subsequent commercial use made of it, since such use “employs” the performer’s labour.

After 30 years of consultations among governments and different rights’ holders, the International Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations (the Rome Convention) was adopted in 1961. The ILO, UNESCO and WIPO have shared the administration of the convention. Ratification has been slow, but over 90 Member States have now ratified it.

The Rome Convention marked a major step forward by recognizing that performers had some rights of consent to the use of their works and could claim remuneration in some instances. At the same time, the Convention provided options to avoid or restrict the remuneration rights. The trade unions representing performers were never entirely satisfied with the terms of the Convention, but obtaining greater international protection was seen as an improbable goal.

Since 1961 technological developments and even more sophisticated means of communication (cable, videos, video discs, satellites, digital technologies) have simply multiplied the means by which performers’ works can be copied (even changed) reproduced, re-used, and re-diffused.

Over 20 years ago WIPO updated and renewed its international copyright and phonograms treaties, but efforts to provide similar international protection for performers in audiovisual works have not been successful.

In 2012, however, a WIPO Conference adopted the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances. This treaty essentially covers the intellectual property rights of performers in audiovisual performances (moral rights and rights and rights to authorize reproduction, distribution, rental and diffusion to the public) of performances that have been “fixed” in audiovisual fixations. There are, however, options to restrict rights: replacing authorization with remuneration and/or transferring rights against royalties or remuneration. The Beijing Treaty, with about 17 ratifications, will come into force when 30 States have ratified.

With these developments, what is the role of the ILO?  It has not been closely involved in the Beijing Treaty.  The most recent Rome Convention Intergovernmental Committee was held in 2009. Any future meeting is dependent on “new” developments, presumably the entry into force of the Beijing Treaty.  What is the future of the Rome Convention once the Beijing Treaty comes into force?  Some workers’ organisations have expressed doubts about the effectiveness of the new treaty and would like clarifications of the possible implications.

After 100 years of defending performers’ rights, will the ILO continue to do so?

Clearly the ILO’s continued concern for the employment and working conditions of performers, most of whom are in atypical forms of employment, will remain. The ILO’s Global Forum on Employment Relationships in Media and Cultural Sectors in 2014 provides a roadmap. The ILO meeting was followed by a trade union handbook in 2016, “Reaching Out to Atypical Workers in the Arts, Media and Entertainment Sectors”, prepared by European members of the International Arts and Entertainment Alliance. These are all critical aspects of performers’ working lives.

The question remains, however, as to whether the ILO has a role to play, and which one, in defending performers’ rights when their works are “fixed” and used and re-used in many forms.

In the past even the future was brighter / Peter Auer

The Global Commission on the future of work, set up in 2017 as a second step to the future of work initiative created by the DG, Guy Rider, in 2013, is in full working gear, organising technical events in order to issue a major report in 2019.

This effort makes me think that it is timely to remind of another major initiative on the same subject, back in the not so far past. In 2000 the French Ministry of Labour and the then Director General of the ILO, Juan Somavia, initiated a series of symposia on the same subject, coined in broader terms as the “future of work, employment and social protection”. I was then charged by the DG to coordinate these events in close collaboration with the French ministry of labour. Subsequently, the ILO invited  experts on the matter in the ILO, the French ministry, the social partners and the international research community and held 3 conferences in the years 2001, 2002 and 2005.

The first conference, organized in Annecy, France in 2001 discussed the need for the development of policies to provide security for workers in the face of growing uncertainties, which were caused by the forces of globalization, as well as technological and organisational change. Accordingly, the first conference discussed the large subject of the transformations of work and employment as a consequence of these changes and the impact of these transformations on work and society as well as the possible economic, political and social responses for increased worker security. (For details see the conference proceedings: Peter Auer and Christine Daniel “The future of work, employment and social protection: the search for new securities in a world of growing uncertainties” IILS, ILO 2002).

The second symposium meeting, organized in Lyon in 2002, focused on labour market dynamics and discussed trajectories of the employed and unemployed, life cycle approaches, the evolution of regulations and the need for well integrated policies. The concept of life long security, protected transitions on the labour market with varying periods of work, education and training, as well as the protection of risks at particular difficult periods in the life cycle of individuals was a core idea in this meeting. Balancing working and family life was seen as a particularly important part of modern, dynamic labour markets that increase female participation in the worklife. (see Peter Auer and Bernard Gazier ” The future of work, employment and social protection: the dynamics of change and the protection of workers” ILLS, ILO 2002).

The third meeting in 2005 was again organized in Annecy and found that globalization has indeed enhanced the overall well being of countries that have participated in globalization and have contributed to an overall reduction in poverty. However, in the public perception, globalization was increasingly seen as a job killer, affecting people’s life course negatively and a big driver of inequality. While it was found that most adversely affected are countries that do not, or only marginally participate in the economics of globalization, it was also acknowledged that that there are few policies effectively compensating the losers of globalization. The conference analysed these trends and patterns in the internationalisation of employment, looked at losers and winners and proposes new policies of compensation, based on labour rights and standards and on labour market and social policies  which build an effective employment adjustment and social protection system that leads to a fairer globalization. (See Peter Auer, Geneviève Besse and Dominique Méda “The internationalization of employment: a challenge for a fair globalization”, IILS, ILO 2005.)

In conclusion the series of conferences organized by France and the ILO posed many of the right questions and proposed a framework for labour standards and labour market policies that would allow to govern globalization at national and international level in order to make it fairer. However, the financial crisis starting in 2008, which needed ad-hoc interventions to cope with the negative impact on jobs, reduced the ability to build long term labour market and social policy frameworks that would accompany the shocks of globalization in a more sustainable way.  Quantitative easing worked well for private investors, but was accompanied by a reduction in public spending on social and labour market policies.

Also in the light of recent attempts by a major economic power to reduce globalization alltogether and install national preference, and the rise of nationalism in Europe and elsewhere one might ask if the paradigm “let globalization happen, but compensate the losers” is still accepted as a road map for developing standards and policies. What we see is that policies of compensation are superceded by protectionist measures, and one may ask whether the Annecy conference series was too overoptimistic on the governance of globalization by standards and policies. It is in this context that one may say that “in the past even the future was brighter” as this belief of being able to govern globalization in order to make it fairer is less prevalent today than in the early 2000s. This one of the important challenges that the Global Commission on the future of work will have to discuss.

* This is a variant of the saying in German “früher war auch die Zukunft besser” that is ascribed to the humorist Karl Valentin