15 September, 2010
At a side meeting in Geneva at the 2010 International Labour Conference of the ILO in June 2010, the UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie, requested the ILO’s expertise in determining the impact of precarious work on human rights.
In preparing to make operational the 2008, “Respect, Remedy, Protect” framework, Ruggie is consulting with a wide range of actors, including through an online consultation forum. Ruggie’s request to the ILO follows online submissions by the Global Union Federations International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Association (IUF) and the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), which both highlighted the fact that CAL and other forms of precarious work are being used to undermine the human rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining.
John Ruggie
In its submission to the consultations, the IMF’s statement said, “It is our submission that precarious work threatens the very survival of stable employment and collective bargaining,” adding, “As with other human rights, exercise of the fundamental enabling rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining is severely constrained by fear. That fear comes from the vulnerability that employers are imposing on workers every day, in developed and developing countries alike, with the explosion of precarious work practices.”
Ruggie’s “Respect, Remedy, Protect” framework is based on three pillars: it is a state duty to protect human rights abuses by third parties, including businesses; corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and that there must be greater access by victims to effective remedies, judicial and non-judicial.