Introduction

This chapter introduces the global campaign “Stop Gender-Based Violence at Work! Support an ILO Convention!”, beginning with its launch in 2009 until the adoption of the standards in 2019. In Chapter 7 we return to the campaign for the ratification and implementation of C190.

One of the defining features of the campaign is how it galvanized and was actively supported by strong allies and partners, including trade union solidarity and development organizations such as the Solidarity Center, informal workers’ organizations such as Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) and StreetNet International, and human rights, women's and feminist NGOs such as CARE International, Human Rights Watch, ActionAid and the Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University, among many others. The global campaign drew on lessons from other campaigns about building a social movement and alliances, including feminist campaigns in Latin America for gender justice and the strong alliance established between trade unions and domestic workers by the ITUC, the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) and the International Domestic Workers Network (IDWN), leading to the ILO Domestic Workers Convention No. 189. Alliance building between trade unions, feminist and human rights organizations had been key to the domestic workers’ campaign, with 15 international NGOs signing up as global allies endorsing the campaign and giving support to the “12 X 12” campaign goal: 12 ratifications by 2012.

The subject itself galvanized and united women in an unprecedented way. One of the key people driving the campaign from the ITUC Equality Department, who had also been directly involved in the domestic workers’ campaign and union organizing, was Marieke Koning. Her campaigning knowledge and experience were critical to the campaign. When interviewed, she said:

Eric: What is “supercharging”?

Corinne: Supercharging is an action plan to accelerate the decarbonization of the global economy. It is based on realistic assumptions about the motivations of individuals, businesses and governments. Serious targets are now embraced by Europe, the United States, China, and India. The goal is to prevent the earth's temperature from rising more than 1.5°C. A huge amount is happening, but the current trajectory of decarbonization falls far short of this ambition. The striking omission is a coherent framework for action. Supercharging is not about targets, but actions. At every point, we ask: What can be done to reduce emissions rapidly, based on a realistic view of how individuals, businesses and politics work? Highly complex global carbon taxes, or trivial advice on lifestyle changes, don't cut it. Taxes which work in the textbook often fail in reality, global lifestyle shifts don't even appear in theory. We need to refocus every area of policy to replicate the extreme successes in pockets of the world where rapid growth in sustainable energy is occurring, and where consumers are voluntarily switching purchasing decisions en masse. There are already successes in parts of China, India, Europe and the United States which prove that we have the technology and the resources to collapse emissions. If these models are replicated, if we supercharge the global economy, we will not only have sustainable economies and cleaner air, there are also very good reasons to believe that we will have higher incomes.

Eric: History shows that technology-led transformation of our economies greatly improves the quality of our lives and our living standards. The green transition should be no different. This is not idealistic. There will be some losers, particularly owners of fossil fuel assets. Fortunately, in most of the world these assets are largely in the hands of three groups: thugocracies, theocracies, and a fraction of the “1 per cent”. The overwhelming majority of the planet need not worry about the value of these assets falling towards zero.

Corinne: In order to supercharge the world, we need a clear diagnosis of the problem, a theory of change, and very smart policies. How would you summarize the problem?

Eric: Climate change is sometimes described as a “wicked problem”.

Eric: “Planting trees could be the number one super-weapon in tackling climate change.” This was the headline-grabbing summary of a research paper published in the journal Science recently. Greta Thunberg put the conclusions in context: we need trees, but we really need to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Trees and methane are two notable omissions from our discussion so far. Let's start with trees, and then take on cows. So far, there is a clear structure to our argument: work out how significant a contribution every sector is to man-made emissions, assess how tractable it is to solutions, and then apply EPICs, smart regulations or other smart policies. So, what contribution do forests make to global emissions?

Corinne: Everything we have argued for so far involves reducing how much CO2 we emit into the atmosphere every year – restricting sources of carbon. There is a separate class of factors which can absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. These are natural “carbon sinks”, such as trees, soil and oceans, and man-made technologies, such as carbon capture and storage. Forests sit in this category. Everyone knows we need to stop the deforestation of the tropics. If you have ever purchased a “carbon offset” when you book a flight, this may well have involved planting trees.

Eric: How should we think about nature-based carbon sinks compared to all the emissions we are trying to abate?

Corinne: It is very hard to measure the effect of carbon sinks with accuracy, so the range of estimates is very wide. Oceans are estimated to capture between 25–30 per cent of annual emissions. Forests absorb somewhere between 5 and 15 per cent of man-made emissions. To put both in context, the steel industry alone generates 8 per cent of global emissions. So Greta's summary is correct. Trees are good, but we cannot rely on capture, we need to keep the fossil fuels in the ground.

Eric: If forests absorb so much less than oceans, why do we hear so much more about planting trees than protecting the oceans?

Corinne: There is a huge amount we can and should be doing to protect oceans: eradicating plastic and microplastic pollution, heavy metal pollution, overfishing. These are extremely important to the health of the oceans and the preservation of biodiversity, but the ocean's specific ability to absorb carbon emissions is largely out of our control.

Corinne: We have tried to ground supercharging in pragmatism. We have proposed policies consistent with an honest take on political, social, psychological and economic reality. Before we describe our proposals to supercharge the world, we need a blunt assessment of the constraints on global policy-making. Global politics often feels like a chaotic set of events that don’t make sense, but we can observe some very common threads. Our friend, Mark Blyth, describes the world pithily: “The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neo-nationalism has just begun.” You and Mark discuss the emergence of the era of nationalism extensively in Angrynomics. One way to make sense of politics is to think in terms of trends and the incentive structures that politicians are operating under. The simplest incentive politicians have is to get elected. Let's discuss what neo-nationalism is, and how it influences that incentive to get elected.

Eric: In representative democracies where elections are often swayed by the votes of relatively small minorities, using nationalism to swing a decisive minority of the electorate is an obvious strategy for politicians to exploit. It is also striking that a political system like China’s, which does not hold national-level elections, also harnesses anti-other ideology (usually anti-America) to unify and motivate the domestic population. Tribalism is a motivating instinct which is very easy to switch on. We see this within advanced economies like the UK, we see this in former communist countries like Poland and Hungary, and we see this in emerging economies like Turkey and Russia. Trump's “Make America Great Again” adds nostalgia to Berlusconi's slogan, “Forza Italia”. Tribalism is an electoral and political strategy either to disguise the true agenda, or to compensate for an intellectual vacuum.

Corinne: How does this compare to the era of neoliberalism?

Eric: The era of neoliberalism broadly refers to a period from the early 1980s until the mid-2000s. It was defined by a shared set of economic beliefs across the western developed world, and from the late 1980s, across former communist countries as well. This period was defined by a consensus in economic policy, devolving control of industry to the private sector, increasing the role of markets in labour and product markets, and retaining a narrowly-defined role for the state.

Corinne: The role of the state being technocratic governance of economic policy, with varying degrees of welfare provision.

Corinne: Eric, you have analysed the effects of the environmental wave in financial markets. Can you give us a snapshot of what you see, and why you think it is happening? Then we can get to the crux of the matter. How do we harness these forces for supercharging the green transition?

Eric: A focus on environmental investing has gripped financial markets, particularly in Europe. Huge changes are occurring, in a way that is very similar to your description of corporate change. There is evidence of environmental factors affecting stock prices and bond yields. You identify this as a motivation for companies to change behaviour. I couldn't agree more. CEOs and boards obsess on their stock price, not least because it affects their personal finances.

Corinne: Why is this happening now?

Eric: There are three reasons. Social norms are changing, regulatory changes have been introduced, and stocks perceived to be environmentally friendly have outperformed the market.ESG stands for “Environmental, Social and Governance”, and has become the buzzword in finance for investing with a conscience. The trend completely mirrors your description of the change in corporate culture. The shift in beliefs in the past two years has been rapid. It feels similar to the dot-com boom when in the space of a couple of years something that was originally the domain of geeks started to dominate all discourse. The same thing has happened with green investing. Two years ago, clients rarely raised the issue of sustainability within investment portfolios. Now it comes up in every meeting. If we go back ten years, the only serious work in this area was in the area of “impact investing”.

Corinne: Impact investing targets the social return as well as a financial return.

Eric: That's right. Prior to 2019, investors who were focused on the environmental and social effects of investments were operating in a niche. The big change is in public markets. Public markets include the stock market and the bond market, where securities are listed, priced and traded. Outside of the banking system, public markets are by far the largest part of the financial sector. The value of global stock markets exceeds $100 trillion. Bond markets, where the world's largest businesses and governments borrow, are even larger than this. Pension funds, insurance companies and international investors invest trillions of dollars globally in these markets.

Introduction

The adoption of the ILO Violence and Harassment Convention (C190) and Recommendation (R206) in 2019 was a landmark achievement for workers around the world. The next step for the global campaign was to put these new rights and principles into reality (see campaign logo in Photo 7.1). In this chapter we chart the next phase of the global campaign starting in June 2019, and its focus on the ratification of C190 and the implementation of the standards. We present examples of national campaigns and alliances to illustrate the different strategies in this next phase of the campaign. The Covid-19 pandemic not only added extra urgency to the campaign but also shifted campaign strategies from early 2020 onwards.

Ratification of ILO Conventions is important, because it requires member states to implement the standards in national law and practice, making them binding and subject to accountability. This process ensures that workers’ and employers’ organizations are formally involved as stakeholders in the application of standards through the ILO's supervisory system. ILO supervision includes the examination of periodic reports on the implementation of Conventions, and there are special procedures for complaints to be made about the general application of Conventions. Supervision is carried out by the ILO's Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations and the ILC's Tripartite Committee on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations.

The ratification campaign, which started as soon as the 2019 ILC ended, wanted to ensure initially that two countries ratify the Convention, in order for it to come into force 12 months after the second ratification. Ratification campaigns sprang up in countries all over the world, building on the successful campaign for C190 (see Photo 7.2). Ratification by the first two countries, Uruguay on 12 June 2020 and Fiji on 25 June 2020, meant that the Convention came into force on 25 June 2021.

At the time of going to print (autumn 2021), nine countries have ratified C190. In addition to Uruguay and Fiji, Namibia, Argentina, Somalia, Ecuador, Mauritius, Greece and Italy have formally ratified C190. The governments of at least 20 more countries have taken formal steps to ratify and a further 19 countries intend to ratify and are carrying out an analysis of their laws to check compliance with C190.

Corinne: The more you think about climate change, the more you start thinking that you need to change everything in your life. Even when I’m on my smartphone, I can't help thinking: How much energy was used to make this? How much fuel was consumed to mine the metals, or transport the components from China, California, Malaysia, Taiwan? How much energy is required to heat the Apple store? How much electricity is used to charge the battery? It is hardly surprising that many climate activists conclude that everything in our behaviour, habits and lifestyles needs to change. This also makes the challenge feel insurmountable. At the other extreme, the Canadian climate economist, Mark Jaccard, has written that the focus on the need for individual lifestyle change is a myth.

Eric: Individual lifestyle decisions are often a central element of “solutions” in climate campaigns. This approach often reads more like a wish-list than a focused strategy for social change. The real challenge is delivering a huge global investment drive to make electricity sustainable and electrify all energy use. The implicit view of psychology is also naive. Changing behaviour is not as simple as responding to ethical arguments and lists in books. And yet, as we mentioned in Chapter 1, there are some important areas where we may not be able to rely on either investment or new technology, and we do need to change behaviour. In which case we need a realistic understanding of social change and behavioural psychology.

Corinne: The typical to-do list says “eat less meat”, “car share” and “consume less”. On the fuzzy end of the spectrum, we’re advised to practice mindfulness, plant trees, and work to find our purpose. There's something fundamentally unhelpful about much of this, which is worth being blunt about. Even the engaged, informed and the motivated don't change their behaviours like this. I have a guilty history of susceptibility to fast fashion. I have to fight the thrill of filling a digital basket with cheap fashion goodies, the big bag arriving, and new outfits galore. You get a serotonin hit from it. Marketing strategies play on the precise psychological traits that Dan Ariely describes. I’ve managed to quit fast fashion now, but I still struggle to wean myself off the odd burger. The recommendations in books like How To Avoid A Climate Disaster, or The Future We Choose, are spot on.

Eric: When it comes to climate change most people think capitalism is part of the problem, that the profit motive pays no regard to the planet. So, Corinne, when did this change?

Corinne: During lockdown.

Eric: Your view is that an irreversible culture change is occurring. Is that right, and if so why?

Corinne: If you had told me five years ago that in 2022 most major financial firms and banks would have signed up to getting their “financed emissions” down to net zero by 2050, that the big oil companies would be transitioning to renewables, that consumer goods companies would have started the hard work of reducing emissions across their supply chains, I would not have believed you. Well, they are. We need to understand why, we need a concrete measure for what they’re doing, and we need to work out how to supercharge the process. This culture change means that the private sector is primed to be highly responsive to smart policies. That's the opportunity, we must not miss it.

Eric: So why has global capitalism suddenly woken up to the reality that it is destroying the planet?

Corinne: Rebecca Henderson opens her book Reimagining Capitalism with a quote from the biologist Edward Wilson: “We have paleolithic emotions, mediaeval institutions, and godlike technology”. That is not something we are going to change. So if we are to accelerate this transformation of the economy, we need to shift incentives in a way that is realistic about how human beings operate. This same insight holds for corporations.

Eric: Are businesses also motivated by paleolithic emotions?

Corinne: Yes. The corporate version is profit and loss. That’s the key operating logic of business – making money.

Eric: So explain the relationship between responding to the climate crisis and making money. Why has business decided that cutting emissions will boost the bottom line? Isn't the opposite more plausible, that there's a tension between profitable growth and acting on climate?

Corinne: That framing is too simplistic. Three discrete forces are at work, all of which affect company profits and the incentives of senior executives. Share prices are already being impacted by environmental factors. This is a huge motivator. Stock prices determine companies’ ability to access capital for funding their businesses, the cost of making acquisitions, and many executives’ remuneration is linked to the stock price.

Introduction: a draft framework for an ILO Convention and Recommendation

Following the meeting of experts and the endorsement by the Governing Body to proceed with standard setting, the next stage in the process involved preparatory work by the ILO for a draft framework for a Convention and Recommendation, taking into account the views and preferences of its constituents. The responsibility for this rested with the ILO's Conditions of Work and Equality Department (WORKQUALITY), which had oversight for the Gender, Equality and Diversity & ILO AIDS Branch (GED/ILOAIDS) and which played an important role in supporting the standard-setting process.

In this chapter we discuss three distinct developments in the path to the adoption of C190 and R206, focusing on the perspectives of workers and their contribution to the process. The first is the role of the ILO's questionnaire and the resulting “yellow report”, which set out some of the key language and framework for the draft text from which negotiations began at the International Labour Conference in May and June 2018. The second is the role of the campaign and the extensive preparations and strategy in the Workers’ Group before and during the negotiations in 2018. Third is the strategy employed by the Workers’ Group in the negotiations during the 2018 Standard-Setting Committee meetings.

Beginning in 2017, the global campaign to end GBV in the world of work and for a binding Convention played an increasingly important role in building women workers’ capacity and awareness of GBVH and lobbying of governments, with the ITUC taking a lead role in steering the workers’ agreed position to support a comprehensive, inclusive and integrated Convention, supported by a Recommendation. As we discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, the relaunch of the #MeToo movement in 2017 bolstered the global campaign, and added further visibility to the build-up of the global campaign and efforts to raise awareness of the need for a global binding Convention to eliminate GBVH in the world of work unions and their allies across the world. This helped to significantly strengthen and legitimize the negotiating position of the Workers’ Group. These global developments added urgency and relevance to tackling GBVH in the world of work.

We are hugely grateful to all the people who participated in interviews for the book. They reflect a cross section of leaders, activists and allies who were involved in the campaign and negotiations for C190 and R206. Interviews were carried out between September 2020 and March 2021.

ILO

Maria Helena André, director, ILO ACTRAV

Jane Hodges, former director, ILO Bureau for Gender Equality

Shauna Olney, former director, ILO GED/ILOAIDS

Catelene Passchier, chair, Workers’ Group; vice-chair, ILO Governing Body; special advisor, FNV, Netherlands

Manuela Tomei, director, WORKQUALITY, ILO

ITUC and GUFs

Sharan Burrow, general secretary, ITUC

Julie Duchatel, equality officer, IUF

Jodi Evans, women transport workers’ and gender equality officer, ITF

Veronica Fernández-Méndez, head of equal opportunities, UNI

Madeleine Kennedy-Macfoy, coordinator for gender equality, EI

Marieke Koning, ITUC Equality Department

Verόnica Montúfar, gender equality officer, PSI

Adriana Paz, regional coordinator for Latin America, IDWF

Armelle Seby, equality officer, IndustriALL

Ruwan Subasinghe, legal officer, ITF

Maria Tsirantonaki, ITUC Equality Department National trade unions

Calixte Adiyeton, COSI– Benin and CNV Internationaal programme coordinator, Benin

Noël Chadaré, secretary general, COSI– Benin

Joanna Bearnice Coronación, deputy general secretary, SENTRO, Philippines

Mariama Diallo, general secretary, Democratic Union of Workers of Senegal (UDTS)

Moussa Diop, UDTS and CNV Internationaal programme coordinator, Senegal

Eulogia Familia, vice-president and head of gender equality, CNUS, Dominican Republic

Cathy Feingold, International Department director, AFL-CIO, United States

Liz Helgesen, international secretary, Unio, Norway

David Joyce, equality officer, ITUC, Ireland

Martlé Keyter, MISA; vice-president, FEDUSA, South Africa

Ema Liliefna, Equality Commission chairperson, KSBSI, Indonesia

Esther Lynch, deputy general secretary, ETUC

Rachel Mackintosh, E tū, New Zealand

Fiona Gandiwa Magaya, head of education and gender, ZCTU, Zimbabwe

Sheela Naikwade, vice-president, MSTKS, India

Rose Omamo, general secretary, AUKMW, Kenya

Neha Prakash, ITF, India

Cinzia Sechi, former gender advisor, ETUC

Vicky Smallman, director of women's and human rights, CLC, Canada

Marie Clarke Walker, secretary-treasurer, CLC, Canada

Annika Wunsche, deputy executive director, DGB, Germany

Ekaterina Yordanova, president, FTTUB, Bulgaria NGOs, MSIs and trade union development and solidarity partners

Alice Allen, challenge director, Business Fights Poverty

Shawna Bader-Blau, executive director, Solidarity Center

Krishanti Dharmaraj, executive director, Center for Women's Global Leadership, Rutgers University

Hester Le Roux, senior economic advisor, CARE International

Nicole Mathot, gender and Africa coordinator, CNV Internationaal

Karin Pape, deputy director, WIEGO

Andriana Paz Ramirez, Latin America regional coordinator, IDWF

This chapter charts developments in the global campaign “Stop Gender-Based Violence at Work! Support an ILO Convention!” between 2009 and 2015. We look at how momentum for standard setting was built, starting with the adoption of the 2009 ILC Resolution on gender equality at the heart of decent work, leading to the decision of the ILO Governing Body in 2015 for a standard-setting item on violence and harassment in the world of work.

The ITUC global campaign “Stop Gender-Based Violence at Work! Support an ILO Convention!”

The ITUC global campaign “Stop Gender-Based Violence at Work! Support an ILO Convention!” (referred to as “the global campaign”) formally began in 2009, when a space opened up for a global binding standard on violence and harassment as a result of the ILC Resolution on gender equality at the heart of decent work (ILO 2009c). Building on many years of trade union campaigning, this period was marked by a greater convergence of and momentum among women workers’ campaigns across the world to make GBV at work more visible. Women in trade unions were stepping up their organizing around key gender equality issues at the global, regional and national levels, and asserting a much greater role in lobbying at the global level around GBV. Trade union mobilization around GBV was building into a global movement, helped in no small way by a shift taking place in the trade union movement itself, driven by the increasing feminization of unions and union agendas. A shift in focus from violence against women to gender-based violence was also an important milestone for trade unions, particularly because it made it possible to bring gender power relations to the centre of the campaign, Cathy Feingold of the AFL-CIO said in her interview: