Why ILO failed?

An assessment by the UK’s Department for International Development in 2011

painted a dismal picture of the ILO’s capacity rating its performance as “poor” in
many key criteria

 It concluded that ILO was not effective at country level and lacked the
technical and delivery capacity to match its policy advocacy successes.
 It also said that not enough of its resources were spent on lower income
countries, where labour abuses still flourish.
 Another key area of activity for the ILO – data and statistics on labour conditions –
continues to provide a valuable insight into the working conditions of millions. Its
data on forced labour and modern-day slavery, which estimates that 21 million people
are trapped in some sort of labour enslavement, is still considered by many to be the
most reliable source. Yet the ILO admits that such statistics are at best conservative
estimates, as it struggles to find ways of evaluating the true state of a global
workforce that is now constantly moving and evolving.
 In a world of complex supply chains, increasing global deregulation of the labour
market and mass movement of workers across borders, it is unclear whether the ILO
can keep pace.

 The large majority of the world’s governments has done more than just pledge to
provide the basics for the world most vulnerable workers—those struggling to make
ends meet in the informal economy—they have begun the essential process of
strengthening society by promoting worker rights.

 Street vendors, home-based workers, domestic workers and day-laborers usually work
outside a country’s regulations and labor laws. They join subcontracted, temporary
and part-time workers who subsist on the fringes of the formal economy. These jobs
typically pay low wages, perpetuate worker and human rights violations, provide
limited or no social benefits, and offer little access to union representation. For most
of these workers, survival trumps active engagement in society’s daily undertakings.

 An estimated 1.5 billion, or approximately 60 percent of the world’s workers, toil in

the informal economy, according to the ILO. In some developing countries, informal
jobs comprise up to 90 percent of available work, and most workers take these
unstable jobs out of necessity, not by choice.

 Women, migrant workers and the young are disproportionately represented in the
informal economy, and often the most exploited. Their situation is exacerbated
because they may be barred from joining unions, which could offer support through
collective bargaining on wages and working conditions, or because unions have not
been able to reach them due to the isolated and changeable nature of their job.

 Informalization of work fuels global income inequality, poverty and abuse.

 Businesses employing workers in standard employer-employee relationships find
themselves at a distinct disadvantage when they compete against those chasing short-
term profits by not hiring full-time workers, paying taxes and benefits, or complying
with regulations and labor law.

 Workers in the informal economy usually more likely to need social safety nets—the
very nets their jobs do not support through tax revenue.