By Agatha Namirembe UPEU Chairperson
The ILO was created in 1919 to promote cross class consensus, dialogue and reform in response to the wave of mutinies, strikes and revolutions sweeping the globe. Its basic framework is consensus seeking, which means accommodating ruling class interests and accepting the existing social order. The bakery should stay in the hands of its current owners, who, it is hoped, will peacefully allow the working class to have more and better pie. The size of slices and recipes will only change when and if the current owners agree. This approach ignores the conflict between classes and the demonstrable inability of capitalism and the state to eradicate poverty create pleasant work and unify humanity in any sustained way.
The ILO prospered most when an enormous boom in the global economy _ the capitalist post _ war global age that ended in 1973 made significant reforms economically possible at a time that they were socially and politically essential in the face of new and massive popular insurgencies. During the neo liberal era that followed, the value of trade unions and the need for major reforms, including of the ILO, were heavily attacked. The ILO nearly collapsed. After many years of crisis, in 1999 the ILO adopted the decent work agenda as it’s core project not only to make capitalist globalization fairer, but also to reverse its own declining fortunes.
The decent work agenda has major problems. The first is that the ILO is a fundamentally week organization that cannot enforce its agenda. To keep states on board, the ILO has long permitted its conventions to be flexibly applied and widely flouted. For example, it leaves decisions on minimum wages to states in consultation with social partners. That’s why Musevenis government is playing monkey tricks on the issue of the minimum wage in Uganda. Museveni for now close to 40 years has been adamant and ILO cannot do anything. The miserable workers under NOTU and COFTU only praise him during labour day speeches. This means that the Decent work agenda is framed to appease ruling classes and says nothing about the right of workers to directly and democratically control the work place. Further more, the ILO promotes the Decent work agenda but simultaneously accepts the neo liberal principle of flexible labour, arguing that policies must be tailored to the specific needs of a country and national development frameworks.
These needs and frame work only benefits the government and employers. While the ILO rejects crude neo liberalism, which would destroy it, its models of work place democratization are work place co determination and tripartism, both of which assume the necessity of partnering with capitalist and states, rather than giving the work classes control. ILO proposals assume that states can, and should be used by the popular classes, and that states, ri9ooioioiather than giving the work classes control. ILO proposals assume that states can, and should be used by the popular classes, and that states act as leveling agents with a pro worker bias. Its vision of social security has consistently fostered state welfare that posits the state as a key agent for progressive change, and does not promote alternatives like worker based mutual aid organizing. The problem is that states, like private corporations, are essentially undemocratic, centralized organizations controlled by the ruling classes that dominate and oppress the ordinary workers.
Many activities believe that the state itself is a violent, oppressive force and site of accumulation that is not fundamentally different to a private capitalist corporation. States and corporations are the two main pillars of ruling class power, the structural basis for overlapping political and economic elites. This explains why state run welfare systems are usually inefficient, normally in egalitarian and always top down. They undermine popular systems off mutual aid by promoting division, passivity and patronage politics.. They are classes in the form of vast funds that can be used for both direct corruption and investment schemes■
