International Forum on Tripartism

Speech by ILO Director-General Guy Ryder to the International Forum on Tripartism

Statement | Singapore | 26 October 2015
Thank you very much indeed.

Minister Lim, Secretary-General of the NTUC, President of the SNEF, overseas guests, ministers, ladies and gentlemen,

Let me say how much of an honour it is to be invited to speak to you this afternoon, the subject is very important, but perhaps equally important in my mind is the opportunity to be able to be here and to say in person, “Happy birthday, Singapore. Happy 50th birthday.” It's also 50 years since Singapore joined and became the highly valued member of our organization, our global tripartite organization that it is today. And I think it is fitting to reflect, on this historical occasion, just how far Singapore has traveled in the 50 years of its independent history. You were born, as has been recalled in turbulent times. And one might say with unpromising prospects: few natural resources, a people rich in diversity, but not at that time necessarily united in a single national purpose, and yet Singapore has made the journey from the “third world” to the “first world” at an astonishing pace. And from that little red dot on the map, Singapore has indeed become the little giant of the world community that we know today.

Let me add as we celebrate SG50, that it's also UN70 this weekend. The United Nations celebrated its 70th birthday. I don't know how many of you noticed it. But one thing is interesting. Sometimes the historical paths of Singapore and the United Nations have intersected. And looking at the history books before I came here, I came across a story of one UN official, Albert Winsemius, a Dutchman who led the first UN mission to Singapore in 1960 and became very closely associated with your development, particularly the development of your excellent public services. And he had a very interesting view about Singapore's success.

Let me read you what he said in 1984. He said there is no such thing as the Singapore miracle. There is no miracle. It was, and I quote, "simply hard-headed policy" that guided Singapore's transformation. And I hope I won't disappoint you, but I think he was right. I think it has been hard-headed policy that has taken you forward. But if there are lessons to be learnt from the Singaporean experience, and I firmly believe that there are lessons to be learned from the Singaporean experience, we have to look at what is behind the making of policy in Singapore.

And that really leads me directly to the subject of our conference this afternoon. It is that, of course, tripartism is fundamentally important to your policy making. And it's hardly a surprise if I, as Director-General of the world's one global tripartite organization speaking to a Singaporean audience if I reiterate what everybody else has said from this podium, that tripartism is a fundamentally important part of the way we should be making policy. But then we're led to something of a paradox, something of a question.

How is it that tripartism in Singapore has been so obviously successful, and yet in other parts of the world, as we have heard, it has been challenged? Indeed in some parts of the world, I believe that tripartism rather than being welcomed as a valuable instrument of policy making, is seen as something like a conspiracy against good decision-making. So what makes tripartism work well? What are the challenges ahead?

Well, you know, I was wondering what I was going to say to answer that question this morning, and I listened to the colleagues from Ireland, from Japan, from Barbados, from Denmark, and now, from Singapore tell their national stories. The ILO has 186 member States. There are 186 narratives of national tripartite experience out there. Some of them good, some of them bad, some of them non-existent, and some of them indifferent. But listening to the colleagues speaking this morning and just now, I began to see things a little bit more clearly from this haze of diverse experience. It's like the haze is lifting.

So let me give you some of my thoughts – and the professor this morning helped us along the road – let me give you some of my thoughts about what makes tripartism work well and what the challenges for the future that we must all face are. The first thing, I think we need to remember it, is that tripartism will generally be judged like everything else, by the results that it produces. Results matter. We can't preach a principle if the principle doesn't produce results. And here in Singapore, of course, the results are very plain for all to see.

And underpinning this – and many people have spoken to this, I think it's a universal element of our national narratives – is this notion of trust between the tripartite actors. Everybody has spoken of the need for trust. Without that trust, it is difficult for tripartism to function to the benefit of all. And it is likely, without trust to simply become an arena for the defense of sectoral interests, but not really one where value is going to be added. The point is that a party that makes a concession today needs to have the confidence that a concession will be made across the table tomorrow. And that's what we need. We need that collective agility and adaptability in policy-making that tripartism can only bring if trust is behind it.

The next factor in successful tripartism – again, this has been mentioned by many – is the importance of it having a firm institutional base. And again, in Singapore you have that firm institutional base, not just the institutions through which tripartism is conducted, but also the institutions which enable the decisions from tripartism to be enacted transparently, honestly and quickly.

And the last factor – and this is the most obvious, but not the least important – is that tripartism has to be conducted between independent and representative organizations. Tripartism taking place between organizations which are not independent is, in my view, very similar to talking to yourself. You know that talking to yourself is generally regarded as a symptom of a major problem in our personalities.

Now, listening to the conversation this morning, as the haze has gently lifted in my mind, I wanted to make a few further comments to expand my comments on tripartism, and I promise to cut some of the rest of my speech so as not to offend the timekeepers in the room. One thing which I think also came clearly out of the conversations is the need for tripartism to be permanent, and for the commitment to tripartism to be permanent. Tripartism which is resorted to simply opportunistically or as a last resort in difficult times - although that can sometimes be necessary - is not, frankly, the type of tripartism which is going to yield its full benefits over time. It is not the type of tripartism that can be founded in trust.

And yet what we observe in the world and what the Professor said to us this morning is frankly an erosion in many circumstances of permanent commitment to tripartism and this instrumental or opportunistic or transactional use of tripartism when things get tough. I think we have to bear that in mind. I think also that we have to bear in mind that tripartism needs to be – and I have to be careful how I say this - it needs to enjoy popular legitimacy.

Let me give you a little anecdote here. When I became – to the surprise of many, including myself – Director-General of the ILO, I wrote a report to my first ILO Conference, where I talked about the future of the ILO and I tried to talk about the future of tripartism. And I put one paragraph in my report to the ILO Conference – it was two years ago – which I was advised by my colleagues to take out because it was too dangerous, too controversial. I said in the ILO, the world's one tripartite organization, we and our tripartite constituents needed to consider carefully the question of what I called tripartite representative legitimacy.

You know, if we expect the ILO to be an influential policy maker, an influential voice in the international community, then we have to be sure that the tripartism by which we operate and must operate, does enjoy the confidence, the legitimacy, and the credibility to be taken seriously. And I think legitimacy in tripartism has three variables, which grow to give us what we want.

The first obviously is a level of density of our membership. A trade union movement with 80% membership and a trade union movement with 8% membership of the working population, clearly, are able to bring different things to the tripartite table. In our membership, we have both in the ILO.

Secondly, tripartite actors who are firmly connected to society and other actors in society, firmly present in public life, connected to the general population - this was said by our Irish colleagues this morning - are going to enjoy a greater deal of legitimacy than tripartite actors who exist in a box, if you like.

And thirdly –this is linked to the second point – tripartite actors who come together and produce results, which are seen and accepted as being in the broader public interest, are going to enjoy greater legitimacy than those who are seen or interpreted, correctly or incorrectly, as defending particular sectoral interests. Those are three elements of what I call representative legitimacy.

Now, that paragraph I put in my report two years ago was very interesting. The reaction was very interesting. More delegates came to talk to me about that paragraph in private, to say how interesting it was, and not one of them talked about it in their speeches in the ILO Conference. And I think that shows the difficulty we sometimes have in addressing problems that we know exist, but sometimes that are easier to close our eyes to.

I've got two more thoughts about the future in tripartism and challenges they present. The first is – and I was reminded of this when my friend, Matsui, from Japan spoke about tripartism being like a honeymoon. It wasn't my experience, I must say – but we have to understand that in a number of places and a number of countries, tripartite actors have chosen to lead separate lives. It is not a divorce from tripartism, but the people have decided in different places, and for very obvious reasons, that tripartism is not the way to advance their particular interest, and when the equilibrium of labour markets tend to move in favour of one party against the other, the temptation is great to cut the links of tripartism and pursue your interests on your own – to go it alone. And I've seen that – we are seeing it – and we know where it's going on. And I think this is perhaps one of the greatest threats to the future of tripartism.

My last comment on tripartism, before I go on to talk about some of the challenges we face in the world of work, has to do with the fact, as we all know, we live in a globalized economy. What happens in Singapore is massively affected by what happens in the rest of the world and vice-versa. And yet by and large, with the exception of the ILO, tripartism is still a national endeavor. It's done country by country, with a variety of mechanisms and circumstances which we all know about.

The question then becomes, apart from the ILO which has a particular job to do, what about the internationalization of tripartite processes? Can it happen? Can it happen at the regional level? The ASEAN Economic Community offers perhaps new opportunities for tripartism. Perhaps the biggest experiment in international tripartism in the world has been in the European Union, where the social model of Europe has embodied a very strong tripartite cooperative base. That’s challenged today. That European model of tripartism, as the professor explained to us this morning is challenged, and some are not very confident about its future. For me, the European example leads me to a final conclusion about the future of tripartism.

Faced with challenges, it seems to me there are a limited number of options for those who engage in tripartism. The first is to try to adapt how we do tripartism to changing circumstances. That doesn't mean giving up anything fundamental. It does mean being ready to embrace change and adaptation to changed circumstances. And I was very interested by what was said this morning by our Japanese and by our Irish colleagues. From different circumstances, from different experiences, you talked about the needs or the reality of developing new forms of tripartism, and I think that's very important.

The alternative is to – there are two alternatives. One is to abandon tripartism. I don't recommend that. But a second alternative is just to hang on to the tripartite structures and mechanisms that we have and to resist any type of change for fear that that heralds a weakening.

I have seen some countries which, because they couldn't defend existing measures of tripartism, have actually lost tripartism. Some structures, which look very solid, which look eternal, actually prove to be very brittle and can break and shatter when subjected to strong pressures. So my personal view is: the need is to adapt and to modernize tripartism where there is need for it.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, that said about tripartism, I want to talk about the other dimension, why this Singaporean miracle is in fact the result of hard-headed policy-making. One is tripartism. The other, I think, is the extraordinary capacity of Singapore. And, here is a lesson for us all to look to the future, to anticipate change, and to act before we are obliged to act.

I'm always pleased to receive the Singaporean tripartite delegation to the ILO Conference in June. They always come and see me. And we have interesting and great conversation. Why? Because every year that they come, they have something new to tell me – a new initiative, a new idea, a new plan. What do you think of this? And it shows, I think, and it's shown me year after year, that Singapore is not ready to stand still. You are always looking to confront and to meet the challenges of the future. And I think we've heard that in the presentations that have just been made.

I don't know if it is comforting or frightening that as you celebrate SG50, you're talking about SG100. I'm not quite sure. And it goes further than that. In this happy year of SG50, a happy year tinged by the sadness of the loss of a great statesman, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, I'm reminded of the quotes that he made, when he said that: "We intend to see that Singapore will be here in a thousand years from now" – not a hundred, a thousand years from now – "and that is your duty and mine."

They say the definition of a statesman – I think it was Churchill who said that – the difference between a politician and a statesman is the politicians think about the next election, the statesmen think about the next generation. It seems to be Lee Kuan Yew very much had his mind on the next generation.

Now, I want to say that this capacity to look forward in policy-making is something that we all need to understand and to embrace in the ILO. And I want to use the last part of my speech to tell you how the ILO is attempting to look to the future.

SG50, UN70, in four years' time, we're going to invite you to ILO100, because we're going to be 100 years old in 2019. And I think that the right thing to do on an occasion like that – we are the oldest of the international organizations – is not simply to have a celebration, but to follow Singapore's example and to try to work out how we can use that occasion to plan out, trace out the future of our organization. And so we have launched at the ILO what we call the Future of Work Centenary Initiative. And the idea here – and I hope that you will agree with me, but we'll see when we get to the panel session – the idea here is that the world of work today is facing extraordinary processes, change and transformation. These are changes going on at a pace and with a depth that I suspect the ILO has never seen in its nearly 100 years of history.

And we know what the drivers of change are: globalization, technology, demography and much else. And we know as well that the future is inherently uncertain and unknowable. And we've seen the reappearance in the world, aren’t we, of renewed geopolitical tensions, which complicate things even more. Nevertheless, and perhaps because of these elements of uncertainty, I believe that we need to look ahead to try to understand what are the mega-drivers of transformation in the global economy, to understand them, and to begin to trace out together what we are going to do to meet those changes.

And I want to say very quickly how we're going to do it. We are going to launch in the coming weeks what we call Four Centenary Conversations around four issues, which I think we need to put our minds together on a tripartite basis. Let me just say very quickly what those four conversations will be about.

The first will be about work and society, a very broad issue, but one which is fundamentally important. And I'm driven to suggest that this is central to our considerations, because it seems to me that perhaps the next generations do not see work or expect from work the same things that my generation or my father's generation expected from work. And I get some very interesting perspectives on this. There are people who think that an 18-year-old, going into the work-force today, wants exactly the same thing as I did. And there are others who say absolutely the opposite.

But in any case, we have to investigate these issues. Work is there so that we earn a living, and we meet our material needs. It's much more than that. Work is the way in which we interact in society. Work is the fundamentally important way of socialization – how we live together, how we act together, how we treat each other. These things are changing. The way that production is organized, enterprises operate, contracts are made, are fundamentally rewriting the environment in which work and society interact. We need to understand this better.

The second conversation is going to be about the jobs of the future. The ILO stands not for jobs, but for decent jobs, you know that. The fact of the matter today is that we have in the world just over 200 million people who have no job whatsoever, 200 million. And those figures, despite talk of recovery in the global economy, are rising and not falling. If you're under 25, you are three times more likely to be unemployed than other members of the workforce.

The United Nations, on the occasion of its 70th anniversary, has just adopted what they call the 2030 Development Agenda. This is the development agenda for the world for the next 15 years. It's made up of 17 sustainable development goals. One of those goals - and the ILO is very pleased about this and has something to do about it - is to attain full employment and decent work opportunities for all. It's great. It's the sort of thing we would all like to see in an international agenda. But if you look behind that goal and look at the numbers, it means that in 15 years the global economy is going to have to create, hold onto your seats, 600 million new jobs.

There are 40 million young people coming on to the global workforce each and every year. And the fact of the matter is that at current rates of growth the global economy cannot create enough jobs. We have to do something to inject job creation back into the global economy.

The global economy which since 2008 seems to be on a low growth trajectory. This has to be changed, so the challenge of the jobs of the future and how we're going to create them and organize them is fundamental to the conversation.

The third conversation is going to be about the way work in production is organized. Now, there are forces at work, which are transforming the possibilities of organizing work and production in entirely different ways. There are numerous forces at work. I just want to focus perhaps on one, which is technology.

There is a theory circulating amongst those who look at such matters, that the world is on the cusp of a new wave of technological innovation. The World Economic Forum, which meets in Davos every January, has made the title for its forum next January, “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. Singapore is putting in place its fourth generation of leaders. We have to think about the fourth industrial revolution. Now, you can believe that or you can think it’s exaggeration. And views are very different. But the fact of the matter is we are certainly facing a wave of major technological change, and the question is – and I don't think this question yet has an answer – will the coming wave of technological change, actually, after all of the disruptive turbulence that it will inevitably bring, will it, in the longer term, create more jobs or fewer jobs? And then the subsidiary question is what type of jobs?

And there is this calculation, will the balance sheet of jobs be positive or will it be negative? But I actually think there is a much more fundamental question, not more fundamental, a new question. And it is this: Technology has within it the capacity – the technology that is coming – to basically allow production to be organized in an entirely new way. There is one school of thought and I had this said to me by a think-tank in Canada earlier in the year, that in ten or 15 or 20 years' time, it is entirely feasible that the major productive players in the global economy will be organized as virtual production platforms. These will not be enterprises as we know of them today, physically located in a single location, and the employer employing workers directly but technologically mediated networkers to put into contact with each other, the providers of goods and services with those who demand goods and services, in a commercial and not a labour relationship.

Now, again, you might want to relegate this to the status of science fiction or speculation, but I think, and we see it now in the appearance of increasingly elaborate supply chains around the globe, which the ILO will be discussing at its next Conference, the process of profound transformation of the way production is organized, and we need to apprehend, and understand, and act to manage it.

The final of these four conversations will be, and it's the obvious conclusion of everything that's gone before, the governance of work. What rules, what regulations, what processes, what institutions are we going to have to make sure that work is regulated, work is protected, the balance between employer and worker interests are properly respected? Will what we have today do the trick? Will the international labour conventions that we have today be adequate to the task? Do we have to rely increasingly on the voluntaristic engagements of corporations to do the right thing or will national law and practices be adequate? Again, I think an enormously important discussion before us.

Now, colleagues, I could say a lot more about this, but I assure you, I will not, you’ll be pleased to hear. I just want to invite you to join in these conversations. I will be writing shortly to all ILO member States to ask them to put in place national processes on the future of work. It is vitally important that these processes be tripartite, another example of the role of tripartism. The idea that we have at the ILO is to give about 18 months for these national processes to report back to the ILO, and we will support those processes.

At some point in 2017, I intend to establish and I have agreement for this from the ILO's Governing Body, a world commission on the future of work that will take in all of these national reports, synthesize them, and draw conclusions from them. And after that the centenary ILO Conference in June 2019 – this is ILO100 – we'll receive the report of that world commission and consider what needs to be done. And this is about planning the second century of the ILO's work. This is not simply a centenary celebration – although it is that. It is about marking out the future of the ILO for the next 100 years.

And it's very, very important that I conclude by saying that the objectives of the ILO – which have served us very well for the first 100 years – will serve us well for the next 100. And that is the promotion of social justice as the best and surest guarantee for stability in our societies and peace in the world. It seems to me there can't be a much better cause than that for us all to join hands and to work together upon. So colleagues, let me conclude. I want, again, to say to our Singaporean friends, thank you for having us here. Your generosity, your warm hospitality has been what it always has been. Congratulations on your 50 years of achievements. I think I've said in the previous occasion, everything that Singapore has achieved is the product of the combined efforts of its people, because you started with little, and you have created a lot. We draw inspiration from the Singaporean experience. We wish you good fortune in the future, and we ask you to continue to join hands with the ILO to meet the objectives that we share.

Thank you very much.