ILO Deputy Director-General interview, Cape Town 2013

25 January 2014

Greg Vines, Deputy Director-General Management and Reform at the International Labour Organization (ILO) was interviewed by Melina Morrison, CEO of the Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals, during the 2013 International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) General Assembly.

Last November, co-operative leaders from across the globe converged in Cape Town South Africa for the General Assembly of the ICA. I was fortunate to spend half an hour during a break in proceedings to discuss co-operative advocacy and development with ILO Deputy Director-General Management and Reform, and fellow Australian, Greg Vines. We discussed the forthcoming G20 meetings. Australia has presidency of the G20 in 2014 and will hold the meetings in November in Brisbane.

A lot has happened since that cup of coffee. South Africa witnessed the passing of revered leader, Nelson Mandela, and the co-operative sector saw the first appointment of a co-operative business leader to the Business 20 (B20) group of leaders that advises whichever government has presidency of the G20. Dr Andrew Crane, chief executive of CBH Group, Australia’s largest co-operative, and chairman of the Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals, was appointed to the Australian B20 in December 2013 by Prime Minister Tony Abbott – a highly symbolic and important development for the co-operative sector.

Co-operatives are ideally placed to contribute a unique point of view about the added value and people-orientated outlook of co-operatives in the economy. The link between sustainable enterprise and sustainable jobs is one that the ILO can make at the G20.

“With regard to the G20, the ILO is one of the formal parts invited to participate in the Leaders’ Summit as well as the Labour and Employment Ministers meetings,” said Mr Vines.

“The ILO sits in on all of the Employment and the Finance Ministers meetings and particularly around labour and employment development we contribute significantly to the policy development and analysis work for the G20. The Director-General attends the G20 Leaders’ Summits together with the OECD and World Bank, which also have formal seats at the table.

“The G20 Employment Task Force has been running for a number of years. It came out of the Labour and Employment Ministers meetings, who have a separate forum. For the first time in 2012 under the Russian presidency, the Labour and Finance Ministers got together and we hope Australia will continue that,” said Mr Vines.

“The Task Force was set up at the end of the French presidency and carried on under the Mexican presidency because there was concern that the Labour and Employment Ministers meeting needed to contribute more directly to the Finance Ministers and the Leaders’ forums and it was decided to really focus in on a particular issue, and of course, at that time the particular issue was employment.

“The Task Force has been working for two years now and it provides a very detailed set of recommendations to the Leaders’ forum each year. In 2014, that will be chaired by the Australian Minister for Employment, Senator Abetz.

According to Greg, co-operatives have always been on the ILO agenda, referred to on a regular basis.

“The ILO constitution from 1919 specifically refers to co-operatives. It sets the ILO up as a tripartite body between employers, workers and government, but then goes on to refer to engagement with organisations formed as co-operatives.

“The background to this is that the first Director-General of the ILO who was involved in drafting the constitution (which came out of the Treaty of Versailles when the League of Nations was formed) had come from the co-operative associations in the UK. Consequently one of the first parts of the organisation that was set up in 1920, was the co-operatives branch, so there’s been that long association.

“There’s a huge potential for interaction with the ICA. There’s a memorandum of understanding from 2004 and there’s an opportunity to look at that again and make it more active,” said Mr Vines.

“In my discussion with the ICA leadership I conveyed that we are open to looking at the MOU and making it a more engaged one and to identify some priorities.

“From the ILO’s point of view, with the new ILO Director-General, we have tried to become more focused on our strategic approach and objectives. We have identified eight key themes that we’ll be working on over the next few years, three of which are relevant to co-operatives: Rural employment, formalising the informal economy and enterprise.

“In each of these areas there is a co-operative aspect. Our co-operatives branch is involved in the work on each of these areas. I imagine and expect that our interventions in the Employment Task Force as well as our general interventions in the G20 will have certain reference to co-operatives as both employment generation and part of that move from the informal to formal economy, and of course on the development of rural employment.”

You can contact the co-operatives branch of the ILO at [email protected].

ILO Interview with Greg Vines, DDG Management and Reform About the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) General Assembly in Cape Town, 5 November 2013

ILO Reports on co-operative enterprise: