1 June 2011 Employers Movement. 100^th Conference of International Labor Organization

The 100^th Session Of International Labor Organization Conferfence Opens In Geneva

The ILO Conference is the world’s largest forum on labor-related matters. This year’s Session on 1 – 17 June will be attended by 4.5 thousand delegates from 183 countries. Ukraine will be represented at the Conference by Mr. Dmitry Firtash, Head of the Joint Employers’ Movement of Ukraine and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Group DF.

This year’s Conference will be primarily focused on tackling the effects of the global financial crisis on the labor and employment markets. These issues remain burning priorities for most of the countries while in many of those, curbing the unemployment problem is a determinant factor for their economic growth recovery.

Leaders of the global employers’ movement regard a dialog between employers, governments and trade unions as an indispensible prerequisite for addressing these priorities. In his presentation The New Era of Social Justice, Mr. Antonio Peñalosa, Secretary General of the International Organization of Employers, noted that the global community is faced with a number of challenges. In this connection, the most imperative task for the countries is devising their national development strategies and securing their national interests protection by expanding a tripartite dialog between employers, governments and trade unions. The lack of understanding of shared goals within the society and low intensity of a social dialog brought about a number of critical changes which, at the end of the day, triggered the global financial crisis. The prevalence of the financial sector over the real economy generating goods and services and the market’s overestimation of its self-regulation capacity is one of such changes.

An effective social dialog helps parties better understand each other and work out a concerted policy of countries’ social and economic development. China and India becoming the world’s leading economies in the short term are a perfect example of it.

The Conference is expected to pass global recommendations about the countries’ further steps towards curbing the crisis. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany and Russia’s Premier Vladimir Putin will be among the keynote speakers to share their respective countries’ experience of surmounting these hindrances with the Conference Delegates.

International Labor Organization was founded in 1919 and remains the world’s leading entity dealing with the matters of labor and employment markets.