Expert%20Group%20Meeting%20on%20Full%20Employment%20and%20Decent%20Work%20for%20All%20Keynote%20Address%20Drusilla%20K.%20Brown%20Tufts%20University

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Expert Group Meeting on Full Employment and
Decent Work for AllKeynote AddressDrusilla K.
BrownTufts University

• United Nations Headquarters
• New York, NY
• October 2, 2007

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Partners Advancing Employment and Decent Work

• Government Essential Responsibility for
  Establishing and Enforcing Basic Labor
  Protections, Macroeconomic Stability/Growth
• Worker Organizations Free, Independent, Worker
  Controlled
• Corporations The Business Case for Humane Labor
  Management
• Multinational Organizations Information,
  Technical Assistance, Services
• Consumers Ethical Trading

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Global Supply Chains as Social Capital

• Global Supply Chains Double Edge Sword
• Extremely Efficient, Streamlined
• Operating in the presence of imperfect
  governments and markets for labor and natural
  resources.
• Capacity to relieve or aggravate governmental and
  market imperfections.

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Corporate Codes Plus

• Ratcheting Labor Standards Regulation for
  Continuous Improvement in the Global Workforce,
  May 2000.
• Charles Sabel, Dara ORourke and Archon Fung

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Leading firms in the global economy have
mastered the disciplines that foster excellence
and innovation among their own workers and
suppliers

• Product Quality
• Price
• On-Time Delivery

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Apply these disciplines to the treatment of labor
in vendor factories

• Gradually and systematically ratcheting up
  standards.
• Process of continuous improvement in working
  conditions.

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Buyer/NGO-Sponsored Health InterventionBangalore
Apparel Factories Geohelminth/Anemia

• Seven Treatment Factories
• 10,810 Workers
• Study July 2004-March 2005

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Multinational BuyersEncourage Factories to
Innovate Across Spectrum of Labor Management
Practices

• Recruiting, Screening, Training
• Compensation
• Health and Safety
• Problem-Solving
• Workplace Based Health Care

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Pockets of Monopoly/Monopsony Power Ethical
Trading

• Young women with little market experience,
  vulnerable to exploitation Apparel.
• Oligopolized commodity chains Coffee
• Ethical trading increases competition in
  oligopolized markets that depress wages for
  industrial and agricultural workers.

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Globalization and Rising Income Inequality

• Even in when all markets functioning efficiently
• Globalization may worsen outcomes for workers.
• Globalization contributing to rising inequality,
  stagnant median wages, growing sense of
  insecurity.

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Essential Role of National, State and Provincial
Government

• Establish and enforce basic protections for labor
  including
• Free Association/Collective Bargaining
• Occupational Health and Safety
• Basic Education and Health Care
• Facilitate a social contract that compensates
  those harmed by market activity
• Establish institutions and governmental programs
  that support workers during market transitions.
• Macroeconomic Stability/Growth

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Policy SpaceRodrik (2007) How to Save
Globalization from its Cheerleaders

• Longstanding view that the restrictions imposed
  by international organizations disciplined
  national governments.
• Today evidence that this process has gone too
  far in some arenas.
• Example TRIPS and access to essential medicines.

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International Labor Organization/United
Nations/World Bank Supporting Role

• Experiments Better Factories Cambodia
• Monitoring, Training, Technical Assistance
• Promoting Worker-Employer-Government dialog
• Helping national governments establish and
  enforce basic labor protections