Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and boxes
- List of abbreviations
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- one Introduction
- two The global economic and social policy context
- three The development of the SPF Recommendation
- four The SPF, social dialogue and tripartite global governance in practice
- five The SPF and the struggle for global social policy synergy
- six Implications for understanding global social policy change
- seven Reflections and prospects
- Endnotes
- References
- Index
one - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and boxes
- List of abbreviations
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- one Introduction
- two The global economic and social policy context
- three The development of the SPF Recommendation
- four The SPF, social dialogue and tripartite global governance in practice
- five The SPF and the struggle for global social policy synergy
- six Implications for understanding global social policy change
- seven Reflections and prospects
- Endnotes
- References
- Index
Summary
This is the story of how the International Labour Organization (ILO) came in 2012 to use its standard setting and soft law powers to resolve upon a recommendation to all countries that they should establish a ‘social protection floor’ (SPF) containing basic social security guarantees that would ensure that over the life cycle all in need could afford and have access to essential health care and have income security. It is the story of how the concept of a ‘social floor under the global economy’ or the ‘global social floor’ was transformed from a term used by global social reformists challenging neoliberal globalisation at the turn of the century into a concrete global social policy measure. It is also the story of the compromises that needed to be made en route, which, in the view of some critics, meant that the initial concept of a ‘global social floor’ became watered down into the concept of ‘nationally variable social protection floors’. In part therefore it is a story of the internal politics of one of the major international organisations of the United Nations (UN). It throws light on the respective roles of governments, employers and trades unions on the one hand, who sit on the ILO's governing body and attend the annual International Labour Conference (ILC), and the permanent secretariat of the ILO on the other. It is therefore also the story of individuals who occupied positions within that context. It reveals who had influence inside the ILO and how it was used in order to win the institution over to promulgating the SPF Recommendation. The story throws light in particular on the role of the secretariat of the ILO. One of the first books to be published in the context of the ILO Century Project, a programme of work to write the history of the ILO as it approaches its 100th year in 2019, notes in its review of all the existing texts on ILO history (van Daele, 2010: 38) that:
In addition to the three constituent groups [government, workers, employers], the ILO is driven by the work of officials and experts, which in historical research are far too often represented as invisible and anonymous actors in international bureaucracy. Consequently their ideas and (non-) decisions through contacts and expert networks worldwide merit greater attention in historical research.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Global Social Policy in the MakingThe Foundations of the Social Protection Floor, pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2013