Multinational Enterprises and the Social Challenges of the XXIst Century

Globalization is unravelling and reassembling the fabric of labour relations in ways that are more affected by local conditions and business requirements than by international standards. Drawing together a group of concerned delegates, a special International Conference in Leuven, Belgium, on 2-3 May 1999, was sponsored by the Euro-Japan Institute for Law and Business. The participants included prominent members of the international legal, business and academic communities, as well as representatives of the International Labour Organisation, the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation (including its Trade Union Advisory Committee), the European Union, and the International Employers' Association. This book is the record of this conference. It publishes the reports presented by the various delegates, and also includes the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (1998) and its follow-up. As an additional feature, it publishes codes of conduct for several multinational enterprises. The text investigates four channels that are available for monitoring social change and promoting social progress in today's world: labour conventions legally binding on signatory states, international guidelines and statements of social policy imposing voluntary standards on multinational enterprises, international declarations of rights recommending agendas for legislatures, and internal corporate codes of conduct. The reports evaluate the effectiveness of these channels, how they operate in practice, their impact on day-to-day reality, and the extent of coherence and consistency they manifest as instruments of social change.