G20 Leaders’ Summit

Remarks by the ILO Director-General at G20 Summit Working Lunch Session on “Digitalization, Women’s Empowerment and Employment”

“The absence of decent work opportunities often lies at the root cause of very many of the problems raised at this G20 Summit – whether it has been migration, trade, action on climate change or, yes, youth radicalization,” says ILO Director-General at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Hamburg.

Statement | 08 July 2017
Thank you Chancellor. The great advantage of speaking at the end is benefiting from what has already been said.

G20 Leaders have spoken a lot about the challenges of inequality, the imperatives of inclusiveness and sustainability, and also about the context of rising citizen concern about the capacity of the global economy to meet their expectations.

Since the start of this meeting, we were encouraged to trace the different items on the agenda back to their root causes.

And the absence of decent work opportunities often lies at the root cause of very many of the problems raised at this G20 Summit – whether it has been migration, trade, action on climate change or, yes, youth radicalization.

So we have every reason to focus on jobs. Nothing is more destabilizing than unemployment, and nothing more stabilizing than having the opportunity of a decent job.

Chancellor, we appear to be at a conjuncture defined by:
  • the continuation of protracted but uncertain recovery;
  • an increase in inequalities;
  • widespread stagnation in wages;
  • and continuing high unemployment in many countries.
Those trends have characterized the issues we have been discussing. And the debates have also considered the onset of what has been called here the “great transformation” of the world economy.

Digitalization is often seen as the major driver of future change. I would add climate to that, and demographics.

We often look at digitalization in terms of the numerics of job creation and job destruction. And we look at the policies in terms of issues such as skills upgrading, and life-long learning to prepare people for new jobs.

But that would not be the whole story. In addition, we need to look at the manner in which the unfolding of the new industrial revolution will affect jobs.

Looking at automation and the capacity to create work should also lead us to reflect in depth about the way the work is done.

One thing we have learned at this meeting is that many of you are already trying to anticipate the impact of those transformations – such as Germany with its Arbeit 4.0 study; like Japan.

But if there’s another thing we’ve learned, it’s the tendency for the facts on the ground to run ahead of our policies.

So we need to look at what the future of work will look like; so I welcome very much what President Macri said about the priorities of the next G20 Presidency.

About women, the statistics have been mentioned by very many of you so I won’t repeat them. But I would underline that there is no unambiguous trend to eliminate the wage gap or the participation gap.

And as the economy transforms, that does give us opportunities.

We need to look at the care economy and its capacity to enable women to overcome the barriers they so often face to combining work and family responsibilities.

Finally two last points.

Firstly at the same time as we look at what is unsatisfactory, we must also look at what is unacceptable.

In that regard, Prime Minister Theresa May has already referred to the phenomenon of modern slavery and trafficking.

And thank you President Macri also, for your action hosting the fourth world conference against child labour and forced labour which will take place in November this year.

Secondly, Chancellor since the beginning of this year you have placed such emphasis on social dialogue, which we all know makes a difference. The way you associated the B-20 and the L-20 with the work of the G20 over this year provides a wonderful example of that social dialogue, and we thank you for that.