EI’s General Secretary challenges the 101st International Labour Organisation
Fred van Leeuwen asked the ILO to stick to its core mandate of defending workers rights.
Deploring the breakdown of social dialogue and the run away of the Employers from the ILO supervisory mechanisms, he condemned attempts to decouple labour and social rights from human rights because of the economic crisis. Van Leeuwen stated that teachers’ rights are widely ignored while employment conditions are deteriorating. The education sector suffers from de-professionalization, directly affecting education quality, he stated. In the name of workers expecting from the ILO an improvement of their deplorable condition, like the detained leader of the Bahrain teacher association Mahdi Abu Dheeb, van Leeuwen noted that this year's events should not derive the ILO from its core mandate of defending workers rights. Van Leeuwen concluded the EI intervention to the General Assembly of the ILO conference by transmitting EI’s full support to the upcoming ILO Director General: "We expect Guy Ryder to stick to his guns and EI will provide the ILO with all the required ammunition."
