31 May, 2010The IMF makes submission to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Business and Human Rights, John Ruggie, to tell him how employers are using various forms of precarious employment expressly to prevent workers from joining a trade union and bargaining collectively.
GENEVA: The IMF used its submission to the UN Special Representative for Business and Human Rights to urge him to fully integrate the relationship between precarious work and the effective realization of human rights into his investigations and recommendations as a matter of priority.
John Ruggie's mandate is to make recommendations on how States can better protect all human rights from abuses by or involving transnational corporations, as well as to enhance access to effective remedies available to those whose human rights are impacted by corporate activities. It is becoming increasingly evident that precarious employment has become one of the principal mechanisms through which transnational corporations are able to deny workers their human rights.
Today, millions of workers throughout the world and whole categories of employment are effectively being excluded from the reach of ILO Conventions 87 and 98, as well as a whole host of other employment rights including access to social security and pensions, maternity and family leave, overtime payments, vacation and holidays, and occupational health and safety.
Precarious work is rampant across all metal industries with the electronics and automotive industries currently the most affected. It disproportionately impacts young workers, migrant workers and women workers and makes a large contribution to the gender pay gap.
IMF General Secretary Jyrki Raina said, "The only way that precarious workers can take action to improve their situation is to unionize. Yet precarious workers the world over are systematically being denied freedom of association."
In the submission, IMF stated its view that precarious work threatens the very survival of stable employment and collective bargaining, yet collective bargaining remains the only mechanism through which workers can obtain a genuine voice in their working conditions. Excluding precarious workers from collective bargaining not only denies them their human rights, it takes away their only real opportunity to improve their employment conditions.
Finally, IMF showed how unions throughout the world are using collective bargaining to limit abuses or to provide remedies for the victims of such abuses, while at the international level, international framework agreements are being signed which commit companies to ensuring respect of freedom of association and the right to bargain collectively throughout their operations and those of their suppliers.