Vice Minister
Distinguished participants
Ladies and Gentlemen

May I, on behalf of the ILO, welcome you to this meeting on Decent Work as a Strategy for Development, which is being held in conjunction with the opening of the ILO's new Office in Hanoi. Our purpose in holding this meeting is to table the notion of Decent Work which guides the work of the ILO across the world and to solicit your views on how the goals of decent work can be written into Viet Nam's development agenda and how it canbe effectively used to support the human-centred process of development to which the country is so firmly committed. At the ILO we believe that the Decent Work modalitylends itself to a balanced approach to development that contributes to social justice and ensures that more people benefit from the advantages of open markets and open societiesin an increasingly globalized world.

But what is the notion of Decent Work? In his report to the International Labour
Conference in 2001 the Director General puts it simply, but eloquently.

The goal of decent work is best expressed through the eyes of the people. It is about your job and future prospects; about your working conditions; about balancing work and family life; putting your kids through school or getting them out of child labour. It is about gender equality, equal recognition, and enabling women to make choices and take control of their lives. It is about your personal abilities to compete in the market place, keep up with new technological skills, and remain healthy. It is about developing your entrepreneurial skills, about receiving a fair share of the wealth you have helped to create and not being discriminated against; it is about having a voice in your workplace and your community.In the most extreme situation it is about moving from subsistence to existence. For manyit is the primary route out of poverty.

Already in 1999, the Director General had articulated Decent Work as a clear objective for the ILO. He emphasised that the ILO's mission was to improve the situation of human beings in the world of work - a mission which resonated with the widespread preoccupation of the people, at a time of great change, to find sustainable opportunities for decent work.The primary goal of the ILO today is to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity.

This goal has several important policy implications.

First, it concerns all workers. Almost everyone works, but not everyone is employed.The pursuit of Decent Work must be concerned with workers beyond the formal labour market - with workers in the informal sector - unregulated wage workers, the self employed, and homeworkers. The share of the informal sector has reached almost 60% in Latin America, and parts of Asia, and almost 90% in urban Africa. In Viet Nam it has been suggested that it could be as high as ......

Second, all those who work have rights.

Third, employment promotion is central objective. There are no workers rights without work.

Fourth, the emphasis is on Decent work. The goal is not just the creation of jobs, butjobs of acceptable quality. The quantity of employment cannot be divorced from its quality.

Fifth, it concerns protection against vulnerabilities and contingencies that take people out of work, - with unemployment, loss of livelihood, sickness, accidents or old age.

Sixth, social dialogue is important, both as an end in itself, and as a means to an end. Social dialogue requires participation and freedom of association, so it is an end in itself.It is also a means by which rights are secured and defended, employment promoted, conflicts resolved, social equity ensured, and policy effectively implemented.

At the ILO the goal of Decent Work is pursued through four strategic objectives.
They are:

Standards and fundamental principles and rights at work; employment, social protection and social dialogue. Gender and development cut across all four.

But there is a yawning gap between the objective of Decent Work, and reality - there is a global Decent Work Deficit.

The Employment gap is the global fault line. 160 million people are openly unemployed in the world. Underemployment raises the number to 1 billion. ILO estimates show that of every 100 workers worldwide, 6 are openly unemployed, while another 16 earn less than the $1 per person per day that their families need to meet the most minimal poverty norm. Many more work under onerous conditions, with low productivity and earnings, in casual insecure employment. For these working poor, access to work - to Decent Work - is the only sustainable route out of poverty. The ILO's World Employment Report for 2001 estimates that 500 million jobs will need to be generated over the next 10 years just to absorb the new entrants into the labour force. Viet Nam estimates that it must create 1.5 million jobs each year to accommodate its young people.

The rights gap is being mapped out by the ILO. 250 million children are estimated to be working worldwide. ILO research also shows that 2 of every 5 countries have serious problems in freedom of association..

The social protection gap is alarming. Only 20% of the world's workers have any social protection. In most of the low income countries formal protection for old age, invalidity, or sickness reaches only a small fraction of the population. And 3000 people die every daydue to work related accidents and diseases.

The social dialogue gap is more difficult to map. A voice gap - based on workers unable to organise to represent their rights - appears endemic to small enterprises all overthe world, to the informal sector, to EPZs, and to migrant workers.

These Decent Work Deficits highlight the relevance and practical policy agenda of Decent Work.

But there are constraints and challenges on reducing Decent Work Deficits, which have tobe recognised and dealt with innovatively.

The first challenge is one of the affordability of Decent Work. Achieving social objectives requires economic resources. This pressures both states strapped for cash, and enterprises struggling to compete in an increasingly global economy. The ILO asserts that social rights are fundamental human rights, and do not need further economic justification. But it is important to look at this from the standpoint that work undertaken in decent conditions and for a decent income can also contribute to economic efficiency. If the argument is one of affordability - that improving the quality of employment or of social protection needs to be paid for - the answer is that very often decent work pays. Neither productivity nor social justice are dirty words for the ILO. On the contrary they can be successfully combined.

Substantive research shows a clear link between social efficiency and productivity at the firm level. Wages, profit sharing, job quality, social dialogue, and worker participation in decision making, all have a positive effect on worker attitudes, motivation and productivity. Employee satisfaction positively affects consumer satisfaction and hence sales. Employee satisfaction is of course linked to retention of skilled labour. The introduction of Work Improvement in Small Enterprises by the ILO in Viet Nam demonstrates the impact of better working conditions, workplace relations and worker satisfaction on productivity. Multi-skilling, increasing worker participation, and improving labour standards in occupational safety and health , hours of work, and freedom of association, lead to a doubling of productivity in Addidas's developing country outsourcing.

But there are also clear macro growth dividends for social policy. Social protection cushions incomes and demand in down turns, making recovery more V shaped.

A second challenge to Decent Work is the misplaced perception that it is more suited to high income countries. But the simple argument is that poor people have rights too. The right to freedom from child labour and from discrimination is the basis for all members of society to have the chance to develop their capabilities, which, in turn, is the very basis of development. The right to organise is the simple pre-requisite for the poor to claim rights, to develop capacities, to earn a fair share of economic benefits.

That progress towards Decent Work does not have to wait for economic progress can be well observed. At the broadest level, an ILO study across a large cross section of countries shows that while decent work is indeed related to economic progress, at each income level there is a great deal of variation in the indicators for Decent Work. So there are substantial degrees of freedom for policy to promote Decent Work, independent of the level of development.

Promoting Decent Work for the majority of the world's workers poses the interesting challenge of working in the informal sector, where most lack adequate protection, security, organisation, and voice. The critical problem here is one of agency. We cannot depend on the usual mechanisms of state regulation and representation in the informal sector where these do not hold much sway. New agents are therefore needed, and a variety have come forward. Formal enterprises subcontracting to informal ones are a means of promoting Decent Work policies in the informal sector. Trade unions are attempting to organise the informal sector. Communities of micro-entrepreneurs are putting safe work on their agenda in Central America, as are home based workers groups in Thailand. Micro insurance schemes for health care for women are being organised in Dakar. In India the SelfEmployed Women's Association (SEWA) has insured 32,000 informal sector women in a social security scheme. Perhaps the best example of social entrepreneurship is provided by the micro credit window of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh with 2 million poor borrowers, affecting 1% of the GDP.

A third important and challenging aspect of Decent Work is the integrated policy framework that it offers. The various aspects of Decent Work, rights, employment, protection and dialogue are mutually reinforcing and cohesive. Much of the world's poverty is based on social exclusion. Employment is therefore a basic need to break through poverty and exclusion. However, work in onerous circumstances, under discrimination or coercionor without any protection, or without any voice, can be a source of exclusion and poverty. Again the efficacy of the integrated approach is borne out through the experience of a wide cross section of countries examined. ILO research shows that countries which are relatively good performers in one aspect of Decent Work, are also good performers in other aspects.

An important part of the integrated approach of Decent Work is its link to macroeconomic policy. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) and Poverty Reduction and Growth Facilities (PRGFs) have now become the major window for multilateral credit. The PRSPs and PRGFs pay more importance to poverty reduction and growth strategies, but a sample of these exercises where the ILO is also contributing shows that the initial documents largely miss out on specifying a credible employment and social protection strategy. The ILO is honoured to be able to work with MoLISA and the social partners to contribute towardsthe implementation of the Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS) of Vietnam.

Thus the three challenges to reducing Decent Work Deficits also emerge simultaneously as opportunities to extend Decent Work. The challenge of affordability of Decent Work, of compatibility of social with economic growth, of the integrated nature of different aspects of Decent Work are all being confronted not only as necessary, but also as eminently doable. Decent Work is not only a human and social right, but also makes economic sense becauseit can increase productivity and competitiveness. Economic and social policies are seen tobe mutually reinforcing at the macro and micro levels. And an integrated policy of rights, employment, protection and dialogue makes macro policy more comprehensive.

But the important point to note is that Decent Work emerges as a comprehensive objective, capturing not only the goals of the ILO, but the aspirations of working people in the very diverse world of work. And Decent Work Deficits become comprehensive measures of progress in the world of work. Accordingly any examination of the world of work can be based very usefully on the universality of the objective of the Decent Work, and Decent Work Deficits as the measure of progress in it.