| The
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
is a club of 30 member countries in which governments
"discuss, develop, and perfect economic and
social policy". Thirty-four governments have
signed up to the Guidelines, giving them a critical
mass and notionally global application. The Guidelines
are more comprehensive than any other of the Global
Eight, covering competition, financing, taxation
and employment, as well as industrial relations
and environment, science, and technology. Like
the ILO Conventions, the OECD Guidelines are for
governments to promote among the private sector.
Since their revision in 2000, the OECD Guidelines
now include all of the core labour Conventions
of the ILO. The
OECD Guidelines were established in 1976, earlier
than most other codes in the Global Eight. For
their time, the OECD Guidelines could be considered
a foundation standard, which certainly impacted
the codes that followed. In 2000, the Guidelines
were revised to focus on sustainable development.
They use local practice rather than internationally-agreed
standards as a norm. For example, they encourage
companies to observe the right to unionize and
adopt terms and conditions of work which are
"not less favourable than those observed
by comparable employers in the host country".
Hence, if workers' rights are not upheld in
an OECD country, the company seeking to adopt
the Guidelines would not necessarily need to
bring practice up to internationally accepted
standards, as more recent codes would recommend.
Like the Global Compact, the OECD
Guidelines seek to promote development by fostering
local capacity, enhancing development through
training and other forms of human capital expansion.
The question the OECD Guidelines
seek to address is: How can multinational enterprises
operate in harmony with local practice? According
to the ILO, "The basic approach to the
Guidelines is that internationally-agreed guidelines
can help to prevent misunderstandings and build
an atmosphere of confidence and predictability
between business, labour and governments."
The Guidelines seek to reinforce and to complement
other voluntary initiatives "by providing
a common frame of reference and by providing
an institutional home for international efforts
to encourage progress in these fields."
Moreover, "as the only multilaterally endorsed
comprehensive code of conduct, the Guidelines
have an important role to play: The Guidelines'
institutions could be used to strengthen and
encourage the emergence of consensus and to
contribute to the accumulation and dissemination
of expertise."
These Guidelines are unique among
the Global Eight in that they have national
contact points in each OECD country that promote
the Guidelines, respond to inquiries and arrange
for discussions in the event of problems. Their
strength is the comprehensive nature of the
approach. However, like the ILO Conventions,
they are for governments to commit to, making
it more difficult sometimes to hold companies
directly accountable. Another difficulty of
the OECD Guidelines is that they compare company
behaviour to local norms rather than to ILO-
or other internationally-accepted norms.
|
Department of Investment Services, MOEA
