Improving employment in small enterprises

In 2005, France introduced a new employment contract aimed at facilitating the hiring and dismissal of workers in small enterprises (CNE). Following a complaint lodged by the French trade union Force Ouvrière, challenging the compatibility of this contract with the International Labour Organisation's Termination of Employment Convention, No.158, the governing body of the ILO recently invited the French government to bring legislation covering the CNE in conformity with Convention No.158.

The Employers' Group took note of this recommendation, and it is up to the French government to draw the relevant conclusions. For the Employers' Group, they wish to take advantage of the debate which took place to bring certain issues to the attention of governments, the Workers' Group and the International Labour Office.

If the ILO is to remain a relevant and efficient organisation, it is important that it gives its members the support and encouragement they have a right to expect of it. Since June, an initiative aimed at strengthening the ILO's capacity to respond to the needs of its constituents has been discussed.

This should first of all apply to the manner in which the office perceives essential developments in national legislations. It should be possible to integrate technological, economic and societal changes and developments in international competition into labour law and labour relations. For the employers, the ILO must be present in the 'future of work'. It cannot do this by setting its own standards in stone.

Secondly, ILO instruments should be examined bearing in mind the policy objectives behind conventions, which seek to address issues of employment, integration and, finally, decent work. The notion of standards that do not take into account their environment, objectives and also, to a certain extent, their internal balance, cannot be defended.

The dynamism of the ILO's standards system - for those countries that ratify numerous conventions as for the others - depends also on the organisation's ability to take into account the realities its members' public policies.

The Employers' Group is astonished at the rigid interpretation of ILO instruments in response to a policy aimed at improving employment.

Finally, the Employers' Group would like to see a debate take place, without too much delay, on the changes necessary in the working methods of the ILO. In the interest of all constituents, the employers would like to see the precise role and nature of the organisation's supervisory bodies clarified, the decision-making process more transparent, greater rigour in legal reasonings, more balance in views expressed on issues of a contradictory nature, the authority of the decision-making bodies upheld, and greater transparency on cases of appeal.

The Employers' Group calls for a modernisation of procedures. The organisation must take into account new trends, new ideas and changes in living and working habits of the 21st century.

If it is unable to do that, it will lose its relevance and, consequently, its influence. The battle for decent work and productive employment can only be won, and all members of society brought together, if all constituents inject dynamism into the organisation's standards rather than treat them as set in stone.

The group is concerned with the misplaced nature of the message sent by the ILO to countries engaged in an active policy of fighting unemployment.

It wishes to see this debate take place within a house to which it remains attached as a common possession - one that will only be meaningful if it unites its efforts and takes clear steps towards modernisation.