KARACHI, May 21: Speakers at a workshop on Friday stressed the need for encouraging social dialogue between workers and management, for early resolution of issues.
They were speaking at the inauguration of a two-day workshop on "Social Dialogue," organized jointly by the International Labour Organization; South-Asia Vietnam Project on Tripartism (SAVPOT) and Social Dialogue and the National Institute of Labour Administration and Training (NILAT).
Islamabad-based ILO representative Gagan Raj Bhandari, who was the cheif guest at the moot, said social dialogue played a key role in achieving ILO's objectives of increasing opportunities for both men and women to obtain decent and productive working conditions, based on freedom, equality, security and human dignity.
He said that the ILO recognized that the social dialogue included all types of negotiations, consultations or simply exchange of information between or among representatives of government, employers and workers, on issues of common interest, relating to economic and social policy.
He said it could exist as a tripartite process, with the government as an official party to the dialogue or it might cover bipartite relations, between labour and management (or trade unions and employers' bodies) with or without direct government involvement.
He said that the main objective of social dialogue was to promote consensus building measures and democratic involvement of main stake-holders. He said that the successful social dialogue structure and processes have the potential to resolve important economic and social issues, encourage good governance, advance social and industrial peace and stability and boost economic progress.
He said that for an effective social dialogue, even when it was bipartite, the state had to provide essential support by providing legal, institutional and other frameworks, to enable the parties involved to act effectively.
Earlier, NILAT chief Syed Hakim Ali Shah Bokhari, giving a brief introduction of the subject, said that labour management could be facilitated through effective social dialogue at enterprise, industrial and national level.
He said that the SAVPOT and Social Dialogue was a Norway-funded regional tripartite project and it covered six countries, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.
Other speakers on the occasion said that tripartism was an accepted philosophy in which both the employer and the worker sought a balancing role of government, so that no party could adopted coercive measures to press for its demands.
They said that although some corrective measures had been taken by the governments of the region, no serious efforts had so far been made to promote confidence-building measures between employers and workers.
They stressed that the governments had to take a neutral position and be proactive to be an effective partner in the tripartism. Mateen A Khan of the Employers' Federation of Pakistan, Nabi Ahmad of the Muttahida Mazdoor (labour) Federation, Zulekha Zar of the Pakistan National Federation of Trade Unions (PNFTU) and others also spoke at the workshop.