International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC)
Inter-linkages & cross-cutting issues, including means of implementation
Lucien Royer ITUC Trade Union Intervention
UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD15-IPM) 2007
Wednesday 1st March ? Afternoon session,
Lucien Royer
Chair, the main avenue for trade union sustainable development and energy implementation takes
place through partnerships with employers at the workplaces, through greening production
processes, promoting energy savings, reducing CO2, addressing air pollution and helping to
properly manage chemicals and wastes.
We agree with the EU on the need to reinvigorate the Major Group participation at CSD 15 but we
feel such a process should become a model for all governments to emulate in their own countries.
We support the statements by EU, Norway and others about the need to mainstream gender equality
and we embrace the statement by the Women Major Group in this session.
Finally, we wholeheartedly endorse the call by South Africa and others for integrated approaches
that include employment and other social issues, within implementation measures.
Chair, a focus on inter-linkages & cross-cutting issues requires giving more attention to the barriers
of engagement. For us, a main concerns is the fact that over 2.2 million workers die due to
unsustainable work practices every year. 160 million more become victim of workplace related
diseases every year. I would highlight that asbestos related diseases, alone kills over 100,000
workers each year and that this figure is bound to rise as the impetus for energy conservation will
lead to the new construction and the dismantling or refurbishing of current buildings or
infrastructures throughout the world.
The CSD must recommit to the WSSD call for linking occupational with public health. It should
also support the WHO ?Action Plan for Worker?s Health? that will be put before the Health
Ministers at its annual meeting next May. For the first time, such a plan has been placed within a
sustainable development context and links to issues of environmental protection, including climate
change and addresses issues like asbestos and HIV/AIDS.
Chair, HIV/AIDS is also a special barrier ? especially in Africa, where it is weakening many
countries? capacity for environmental protection, disaster relief and the delivery of climate
prevention programmes by the shere number of public service workers that are already infected by
the disease.
To this day there is still no overall reporting of progress by G8 countries, from where most of the
world funding comes from for HIV/AIDS. We call on the G8 to set up a high level working group
for this purpose. We also ask here that HIV/AIDS be taken up by the CSD as a cross-cutting issue.
Thank you
level for the purposes ofmy comments relate to those of others about industrial development,
energy access and to those by G77 about MDG goals and addressing poverty.
Those comments all relate to the issue of incomes, which Pakistan has raised in their earlier
comments, and therefore to jobs. The fact is, that someone who does not have a job or does not
earn enough from the one they have, its logical to assume that they will not have proper access to
energy, energy services or, for that matter, many services or resources, like food and health care.
It?s clear that getting a job is the best means of addressing poverty. And it must be more than just a
meager job; it must be ?Decent Employment? - employment that goes beyond the meeting of
meager needs and actually provides a minimum livelihood, one that support the full recognition of
the fundamental rights of the human being and the human soul, and as a full and enlightened
participant in decision-making at work and in the community.
Promoting Decent Employment must be part of the CSD solutions for Industrial Development and
for the MDG.
Chair, in your opening comment, you asked for policy options that would work.
The ILO ?Global Employment Plan? is specifically designed to promote Decent work, for the
purposes of meeting sustainable development, as well as MDG and social goals - all this, through
technical assistance.
The ILO Global Employment Plan must therefore fit into the CSD mix of solutions because many
examples show that embodying its principles have already yielded successful applications.
We have the example of Belgium that has placed employment as a criterion in the tendering of its
CDM contracts for climate change. At the other end of the spectrum there is the example in
Germany of a multi-million dollar energy conservation programme within the domestic sector,
which shows how employment can be made to yield huge social, economic and environmental spin
offs. Many of these examples exist in the CSD matrix.
Therefore Employment planning must be part of your recommendations, Chair, for Industrial
Development.
Also inviting the ILO to become involved in this way can only foster better participation of workers
with employers to implement sustainable development, at the workplace level, through Dialogue.
The ILO is not only the best suited to promote such dialogue, it has a mandate to do it and to
organize tripartite processes, to include governments.
We agree with the EU and Norway that it makes sense to include the ILO and the ILO instruments
to deal with Fundamental rights at work and Core Labour Standards, which must be a cornerstone
of the CSD proposals for industrial development. We also agree that the OECD Guidelines for
multinational enterprises should be incorporated.
Thank you chair
