The Future of Work Podcast

Good afternoon, and welcome to our ILC Lunchtime Conversations

brought to you by the ILO Future of Work podcast series.

We are coming to you from the International Labour Conference

here at the Palais de Nations in Geneva.

Each day we explore a key topic

shaping the world of work, with guests from around the globe

who share their insights and their experiences.

Today, we're going to focus our conversation on SDG 8,

which aims to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth,

full employment and decent work for all.

Progress has been slow and uneven on SDG 8,

particularly on social inclusion and decent work, and there is a pressing

need to accelerate efforts, especially ahead of the high-level

political forum on sustainable development.

Now, in July 2025, and particularly with the World

Summit for Social Development in November of this year,

I think we all agree that supporting job creation and decent work

at the centre of economic policies is crucial to achieving poverty reduction

and building a stronger, more inclusive society.

So to discuss all this, we have our four panelists.

Thank you very much for being with us today.

We have Carmela Torres, who is Undersecretary for Employment

and HRD Cluster of the Department of Labor and Employment of the Philippines.

Thank you very much Carmela.

We have Luc Triangle, who is Secretary-General

of the International Trade Union Confederation.

It you see, we have Roberto Suárez Santos, who's Secretary-General of the

International Organization of Employers, and we have our own

Sangheon Lee, who is Director of the ILO Employment Policy Department.

So we're going to start with the big picture.

Sangheon, how has the world

performed in terms of SDG 8 progress?

Give us the big picture.

Also, when we talk about policies to support full and productive employment,

does this mean or imply less rights at work?

In other words, do rights take a backseat in economic policies?

Thank you.

This is a really critical question.

Before we respond to your question, I have to say it's a great pleasure

to be here with Roberta and Luke and Carmela.

Let's look back a little bit.

So six years back, we had occasions to review the SDG 8.

Probably some of you may remember at the time we had mixed stories,

mixed development, but there was some hope. If we actually take

the accelerated actions, probably we can better deliver on SDG 8.

That's what we expected at that time.

Now, I must say, the result has been overall mixed,

but we have a more bad news than good news at the moment.

So let me tell you a little bit on this.

What is SDG? SDG is all about bringing together

economic growth and employment and the rise together?

So the link is the very important part of the SDG.

So this is precisely the focus of the ILO Director-General's report as well.

But from looking at that perspective, I mean,

I have to say three, four things very quickly.

Number one, economic growth,

probably you are not very satisfied with it, but it's okay.

It's around 3%. This is not that bad.

And when you look at the working poverty it's declining.

That's another good news.

If you look at just the employment figure, we are quite good.

So the unemployment rate is actually getting back to almost pre-pandemic level.

So we are all good on there.

But here is the problem

then.

When we look at the youth and the women,

especially NEET rate, we have lots of issues there.

So when it comes to especially youth unemployment,

NEETs, it's really stayed very high.

But there is a more difficult story coming here.

If we look at the - not just the employment, if you look at the economic growth

and formal employment or wage employment, we have a real issue.

Previously, for each economic growth, 1%

economic growth, normally created 0.6% of the informal employment.

But now that ratio is now declines

to 0.46 points, 0.46%.

So it's quite a decline in that sense.

So we have an issue there.

Second, as you know very well, labour income share once again started to decline

in very recent years.

We had a bit of a moment of the restoring and recovery.

But we are back to a bit of a declining trend.

And the productivity - we are not very good at productivity overall.

It's a 1.5% growth.

But the problem is the difference between large

and the SMEs as, Roberto, you know very well,

SMEs are really backbone of the job creation.

So the productivity gap there

is a real issue.

And most surprisingly, Isabel actually you mentioned

when it comes to rights, we have, we do see quite a bit of surprise.

Whatever evidence are you looking at, we start to see the erosion of workers'

rights everywhere, especially in the low-income countries.

The UN has just released the the report on the SDG now.

So one of the comments actually came up very strongly is that

the global average compliance with the fundamental principles and rights

at work actually declined by 7%

between 2019 and 2023.

This is a way to reflect actually

difficult political situation now.

So back to your question.

Do actual rights take a backseat in the current policies?

I can't say 100%, yes, but there is

some growing indication that might be the case.

That might be what's happening now.

It's a bit of a mixed picture.

Roberto, you already had a report in 2019

that described the progress on SDGs as slow and sluggish.

From an employer's perspective, has this changed?

I mean, does the path to achieve SDG 8 seem increasingly difficult?

And what are the main obstacles?

How much time do

I have to explain that?

Not a very long time. So.

Yeah. Yeah. Two minutes. Yeah. Two minutes, two minutes, OK.

I know, I know, it's a very difficult question. The report you are referring to

it was on 2019.

None of us predicted what was going to happen in 2020.

And, of course, the geopolitical scenario that we have now.

We have

been advocating and very clearly expressing

that there are elements of hope in terms of economic growth.

I think that Sangheon already referred to that. The huge number of people

out of poverty is encouraging. In many,

in many low-income countries,

the emerging middle class

in countries like China,

like also Brazil, like many also middle-income countries

that have also a trend before the 2020 in terms of having more incomes,

also for individuals, due to economic growth.

But it's true that the pandemic, for whatever

reason and I'm not going to enter into that, brought us

a new scenario.

Looking at the figures also, you see that

we cannot say that humankind,

the world, has failure with the pandemic because you also can see that

there was a recovery path, which was very intense in the last years,

especially in the last years. Whether we are now right

back at the same situation than 2019, well, it's difficult

to say. The new element, which is much more worrying from our perspective

and it's not surprising, is

what's the business environment, what's the -

what are the elements for an entrepreneur?

A small to medium company, a ? that wants to push out its own project,

its own business in a developing or a developed economy

right now that has improved or not, that has improved

also to these persons to create and preserve jobs.

How many days it takes to register, how many days it takes

also to have the right talent, also to keep the right talent.

Also how access to credit,

how access to finance is working.

It's not exactly improving,

It's very,

there is hope in the sense that new technologies are bringing now

incredible opportunities for access to credit, for access

to finance, for also access to skills and talent.

It's also very encouraging to see that even the discussion

that we have now in the informal sector, I know that we have, it's still 57%

of the total occupied population in the informal sector.

But it's very encouraging

that many of the new tools, digital tools can be very, very instrumental

to bring more people out of the informal sector.

But still the policies are lagging much behind.

And when we say about when we talk about policies, we say

regulations, institutions, institutions are weak.

Corruption is very spread in many countries.

Social dialogue is not precisely streamlined.

Business organizations, workers' organizations are not solid

as they should.

So all that is lagging behind

and need much more ambition from all of us.

That's where we see the main obstacles.

That's where we saw the main obstacles.

Adding to that, there is a new scenario of trade.

I we cannot insist more that

proper trade integration,

what we should what we used to call globalization.

Nobody

now is using the word globalization. No, not anymore.

Brought many opportunities, brought many opportunities for decent.

work, many opportunities also for reskilling,

for innovation, and also for freedom of association,

I have to say, if properly channeled. We are losing that

and we are very worried of a scenario of protectionism,

of a closed approach from government,

which is going to have an effect,

backlash effect, that is not going to benefit anyone.

Luc we have been mentioning erosions of workers' rights.

What is the position, what is your view from ITUC

on the progress on SDG 8?

Well, I can only confirm that we are heavily

lagging behind in meeting the objectives of SDG 8.

We also have at ITUC our own global

indicator on where we stand today, with SDG 8,

and we are lagging behind. And we even see regression

when it's about, for instance, the eradication of child labour,

when it's about, meeting objectives on youth employment

or when it's about informal employment rising in the world.

Now, almost already 2 billion people in this kind of informal employments.

So we are strongly lagging behind.

That doesn't mean that we just observe as straight unions.

We act where we can.

We are approaching with our affiliates, governments.

I'm not going into the details, but for instance, in the Philippines,

we have worked with the government on indeed bringing in decent work

objectives in their national programme.

We have done that also in Chad, in Namibia,

in Somalia, in Brazil and in many other countries.

But the overall trend is very worrying because decent work,

as already previously said, it's also about rights.

And what we see is that there is indeed a further

decline of workers' rights all over the world.

A few days ago we have launched our

Global Rights Index as ITUC.

And we see further decline on overall workers' rights and trade union rights.

Just to give you a few

examples, 87% of the countries

make problem on the right to strike.

80% of countries don't accept collective bargaining as a tool to make progress.

So in that sense, it's not going into the right direction and we need to name it.

That doesn't mean

that there are not good examples, but we need to name it and we need to say

we are not on track to meet the objectives of SDG 8.

And to conclude

in the DG's report, there was a clear reference

to democracy and to democratic values.

Well, it goes hand in hand - where we see a decline on democracy,

we see also attacks on democratic values and democratic values

includes indeed also decent work includes also worker' rights.

Those go hand in hand.

And in that sense we have launched as ITUC more than a year ago

and now even more, our global campaign for democracy

and also for democracy that delivers to workers, because that's the key.

We need to

have not only democratic elections, but we also need the democratic result

that delivers to workers,

because that's the key to advance on decent work, to advance on workers' rights.

Thank you, Luc.

And and now, Carmela a point of view from the Philippines.

As a representative of a Member State

that will present its voluntary national review

to the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in July 2025,

can you give us a sense of what we've been talking about,

the progress of SDG 8 from the perspective of the Philippines?

Thank you very much, Isabel.

And, just to say good afternoon to the esteemed members of the panel,

as, earlier mentioned by Sangheon, generally, there's a slow progress

as far as the SDG 8 is concerned.

But there's a lot of new developments

or good developments from the perspective of the Philippines,

if we're talking of economic growth, if we're talking of poverty reduction,

if you're talking of employment and economic growth, for example,

has increased, the GDP growth has increased from 5.5% to 5.7%.

And in an overall Philippine development plan,

our target is 6.5% of economic growth.

So we're very happy and are very hopeful.

Poverty incidence has declined from 13% in 2023,

it's now 10%,

10.9%.

But but our concern is regional disparities exist.

So we have to contend with different, unequal developments

because the Philippines has 17 regions and we have to contend with different

status of these different regions from the urban to the rural communities.

We have to see all this, and see what inequalities exist.

Employment landscape is very positive.

For the past years, we've been experiencing, large, good

employment, strong employment growth. In fact, last March 2025,

maybe I could boast that we have 3.9 unemployment rate in the country.

So we hope that this will continue together with all these different

encouraging figures.

We're hoping and we're always, banking on it's not just employment.

It has to be quality employment.

It has to be skilled labour.

And, what we have seen is there's a

new, a reduction of elementary occupations

and more skilled and semi-skilled employment.

But on the other hand, we have challenges.

Sangheon already mentioned

unemployment of youth.

We do suffer from

unemployment, particularly for the youth

Not in employment, education and training (NEET).

It's 12.8%, it's quite high.

At the same time, we have the informal economy.

We have to contend with the informal economy,

the lack of decent work and how we could support and provide

social protection, how we can help

them become formal.

We have vulnerabilities in the country.

The Philippines suffers a lot from natural shocks.

We have typhoons all the time.

We can have as many as 12 to 20 typhoons a year.

We can have all these volcanic eruptions.

And this affects employment, which can displace workers, can displace businesses.

But this is where we have to provide

interventions to ensure that those who are displaced

are even provided support and also even emergency employment.

So this is the general scenario in the country.

So now that we have established that things are not as good

as we would like them to be, and that we have many challenges,

and you've talked about trade, you've talked about climate change,

you've talk about democracy,

so now what can be done?

Sangheon, I'm going to go back to you, again for the global picture.

The fourth International Conference on Financing for

development is going to take place next month in Sevilla.

SDGs require massive financing.

So is it going to be more difficult to get the financing

necessary to advance SDGs and SDG 8?

What's the situation now?

Because this is going to have an impact on what we can do.

Yeah.

My answer is, I'm afraid, yes.

It's going to be more difficult.

So thinking about this, I mean probably you may remember the pandemic period.

So most of the countries suffered the job losses but in different ways.

So the country with a strong financial capacity, they found a way of

cushioning against job losses.

But when it comes to the country with a very low level of the finance capacity,

they are the one really suffered a lot, tremendous job losses etc..

So we clearly saw from the pandemic

the financing really matters when it comes to this job creation.

But in the reverse cases is now, we are all talking about the job creation

potentials in the new sectors: digital,

green and demographic or you name it.

But guess what? All of them requires

investment, infrastructure investment, investment in people.

So that's all require the financial resources

which are, most of the developing countries are lacking.

So absolutely in terms of number, we are talking about

982 billion USD,

it's a financing gap to ensure

that there is the labour market recovery and job creation.

So that's one thing.

But it's not just about how much money you have.

It's also about how you spend the money you've got for the job creation.

So it's not just about the level or also the how.

So there are lots of investments going on right now.

The challenge for us is how can we make sure all this investment

will lead to decent job creation, either

through private investment or public investment?

That's where we need to work a little bit more.

For example, there are lots of tools we can do it.

The starting point is even though economic investment policies

should be job-rich process. So to make it happen, we are considering

making budgetary processes

job-rich so we can improve the employment budgeting and also

the public investment can be also designed to maximize job impact.

And also when we are making investment the SMEs for example,

we can apply the same logic and the same support as well.

So it's a difficult time in terms of the level of resources,

we have to do our best to secure the more resources for developing countries.

But at the same time, we have to discuss how can we use these limited resources

in the way of the maximizing job impact.

So my answer is yes,

we have an issue, but we can do a bit more in terms of spending.

We can do a bit more. Luc and then Roberto, kind of the same question.

I mean, in the next five years, what will be the priorities,

the opportunities, for achieving SDG?

Luc, from from the workers point of view.

And then Roberto.

A few points that I certainly would like to raise.

First of all, you refer to the Financing for Development conference.

Well, for me, this is the key because we can have a lot of development goals

if only half of the countries have the means

to deliver on that because they have the financial means,

yeah,

then we leave half of the world behind.

So the financing for development conference as ITUC,

we hope that we can create the international solidarity

to allow developing countries also to invest in development.

That's one point.

Secondly, we have also the issue

and it was raised by Roberto, of economic growth.

Sure.

We need to grow further because GDP

growth is key

for job creation, but they have to be linked

because what we have seen over the last 30 years is that the GDP growth

has multiplied by four over the last 30 years, but it didn't,

it was not followed, by decent job creation.

And not just with job creation, but I emphasize really decent job creation.

That means also jobs with rights.

And we actually saw in the same period over the last 30 years

that the labour income share in the GDP has continuously declined.

So that means that we create a world,

and that's the reality today, of people that have

incredible fortunes, wealth, billionaires,

where then 50% of the population actually didn't benefit at all,

of all the GDP that has been created over the last 30 years.

So that connection between economic growth, GDP growth.

and work and decent

work, including also rights is for us crucial.

And we have failed on that over the last 30 years.

That's also why so many people are disappointed today in democracy,

because democracy didn't deliver for them.

And that's why we have today the pressure on democracy.

The third point that I would like to raise, it's linked with

what's happening now in Sevilla, but there's also other opportunities.

We have the SDG 8 review later this year as well.

And we don't, let's not forget the World Summit for Social Development.

Well, these are for us

on the short term, not only

the next five years, absolute priorities on which we need to focus.

And for instance, when it's about the Social Summit,

we don't need just another political declaration.

We need new targets that can be measured.

And for instance, for us this is about social protection.

Half of the people in the world, 3.8 billion

don't have any kind of social protection.

Well, the Social Summit fails,

if we don't deliver on social protection.

We have launched in this house a few weeks ago,

a few months ago, the Living Wage initiative, supported by IOE

supported by the ITUC and coordinated by the ILO,

well also on living wages we have to deliver.

The point has been mentioned about youth unemployment.

Well, if we don't deliver a job and prosperity

and future for the millions of young people,

and I'm now focusing only on the African continent,

this is a ticking time bomb for the African continent, but for the world.

So the the objectives need to be focused on those major challenges.

And that's what I hope that we can achieve in the next five years.

Because if we don't achieve those social dimensions, the political

agenda, the geopolitical conflicts will not be reduced.

They will not decline, they will only increase.

So, a better world, a more peaceful world,

a world

which is more calmer than it is today can only be achieved

if we deliver on those basic social demands that we have.

Roberto, I saw you nodding, to the one of, some of the things that

Luc said. What's your perspective from the IOE?

The perspective on what we can do together - What we can do -

What we can do together - five years of priorities - ...how ambitious we can be

to have a strong - The priorities - priority agenda on SDG 8

which is about the economic and social aspect?

Do we have a strong skills agenda?

Do we have a strong productivity agenda

global-wide?

You referred to the informal sector, people in the informal sector,

six out of ten people.

But you go to business,

the figure is even more striking, it's

four out of five businesses -

we don't call it business -

we call it economic units in the informal sector, are in informal.

If you want to push, as Luc was saying, more share of labour income

also for workers, it's imperative to have a strong productivity agenda.

I'm not talking about work productivity.

I'm talking about investment.

The AI reality is here, digital is here.

Connectivity is not there.

It's still 40% of the population worldwide no have even access to internet.

We're not talking about broadband. Digital illiteracy

is still a big, big, big challenge.

We still have many institutions that are not working,

sorry to say, but regulations are far from what is expected.

We are very good doing regulations in many countries, developing countries,

but these regulations are not implemented because they are not realistic

on all the areas and not the grounds.

So if we want to have a strong productivity skills agenda,

we have to put ambitions and courage to see what are the regulations

that are not working and how better they can be also framed,

and also the policies including fiscal, trade,

labour and administrative burdens.

I also want to say

that there is a kind of mindset.

I mean, we look very much for business, but also we take special care

for small and medium companies whenever we launch an initiative,

we all, but especially those who are the ones deciding, politicians,

and we need also to think small.

How difficult is this regulation,

this proposal to create the environment for a company,

for creating decent jobs? And that is still not there.

This mindset from all of us is far away

also from being there. So we put ambition on that.

I am pretty sure that we will have in the medium-term results.

Last but not least

is partnerships.

How we work and collaborate together.

In ILO we know how tripartism works.

We have a strong relations with the workers, tensions,

but very often very difficult conversations, that's not the reality outside. The way

we do partnerships, they way we work together for social protection

with different actors. They way

we work together for access to health, access to education.

The private sector needs to have a better engagement there.

And for that you need also a different mindset in many sense,

because we are not yet there in this partnership

that will bring the ambition that we need.

Carmela, what is the view from the Philippines? You mentioned before

informal work, informal economy.

So what strategies is the Ministry of Labor pursuing to formalize

jobs and extend social protection coverage to informal workers?

And is this your priority?

The informal sector is our priority

of course. 498 00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:35,240 And the Department of Labor has, Employment has

implemented a couple of strategies to formalize the informal economy.

We've been very strong with policy advocacy and legislative support.

There is now a current

bill or, we say a proposal, to create a Magna Carta

for workers in the informal economy,

which will look into a very comprehensive approach to how to look at the rights

of these people in the informal economy, ensuring social protection

and see how they can be guided to formalization.

Another is, we've been implementing programmes

that would help them gain employment, even for a short term,

especially those groups that are disadvantaged and displaced

and providing they're being provided emergency employment support

and at the same time guide them after to formal employment.

We've been

implementing comprehensive livelihood programmes

that will try to boost and empower the workers

to give them livelihood and at the same time, create small businesses

that will make the micro entrepreneurs, micro entrepreneurs

that will ultimately guide them and lead them to formalization.

Currently, we're implementing a comprehensive programme,

which we call the Adjustment Measures Programme.

This Adjustment Measures Programme is helping the micro

and small enterprises to improve their systems,

look into the productivity, do a lot of capacity building.

And one of our priorities is to capacity building,

especially in the area of technological developments.

As Roberta has mentioned, AI is here.

We have to give the small and the micro, small and medium enterprises

the opportunity to learn what AI is and how they could use AI

in their small enterprises.

And this is one of the areas that we're looking in to, to see how AI can help them.

How see AI would be able to support them, particularly in looking into

how they can improve their small businesses,

how they can work with other small, enterprises to create group enterprises

that can help them improve and be formalized in the future.

Thank you very much.

This is an essential topic and we could be talking about this for hours.

For my last question, I'm going to ask you to be very brief.

One minute. What are the most promising,

what are the most promising strategies for mobilizing stakeholders?

Sangheon, I start with

you and then Carmela and Luc and Roberto.

Yeah. It is one minute, I know. Yeah.

It is hard to choose one.

For me, we are living in a very polarized

geopolitical political environment at the moment.

I think it's very important to secure a common understanding

or a common sense of direction

and the goal, especially on the SDG 8.

Decent work is all about the reality of the people.

I think there is not much room for political,

you know, polarization and disagreement.

I think we can build on that.

Everybody can agree decent job

creation should be the main purpose of economic and social policy.

Everybody will agree on that. The second related to that is the,

when we are talking about job creation,

job quality cannot be a secondary consideration.

We are talking about combining gross and structural

transformation and upgrading economy and the formalization - all of this.

We cannot stay in the low-

skilled and low-paid job trap.

So I think if we can bring all these together

to have a common narrative on the common goal and common

purposes and common direction, that will be really excellent,

actually, stepping a sort of board for the mobilizing

all different stakeholders together, sitting on the same table.

Action together.

Thank you, Sangheon. Carmels. Yes, yes.

Thank you.

We have always been promoting social dialogue and tripartism

in all the work that we do, whether it is policy

planning, programme development, evaluation and all of this.

But tripartism should evolve.

And it has evolved in the Philippines because now we're working into

what we call a multi-stakeholder approach,

that means taking into consideration

collaboration that is inclusive, collaboration

that will involve not only the workers, the employers,

but also the basic sectors of the informal economy, people with disabilities,

indigenous peoples, the social sectors to involve them in the planning

and implementation process.

And what we have been saying is when the multi stakeholders are involved,

it should be grounded within the principles of transparency,

shared responsibility and

collaboration,

strong collaboration among each other.

Luc, your turn.

Well, I would like to emphasize first the important connection

between growth,

jobs and rights.

They are all three are important in creating

what we want to do with job creation.

So they are at the same level.

Growth is not enough if there is no job creation,

and job creation is not enough if they are not connected to rights.

So all three are equally important.

That's one point.

And I think we need to continue to work on that nexus between those three.

The second point, the overall track record of SDG

implementation and achievement is only 17-18%.

Well, we can be extremely pessimist on that.

But actually we also can look at look at it from a positive approach.

Look what has been created under these 17-18%: a lot.

And what we need to do is to look to the good examples

in a number of countries where we have achieved progress

on decent work and in connection to sustainable growth.

So I think we need to look to best practice, how this has been achieved,

and I think indeed, and I am a strong believer,that social dialogue,

collective bargaining, tripartism is key in getting there.

And third point, we will continue to do our work as trade unions,

be sure. That means that we will continue with our affiliates

in the 170 countries where we are represented, to work on governments

to make indeed SDG eight into something real,

to work on results.

That also means that we will continue with our own campaign

as ITUC, because we have a campaign "Time for 8".

We continue with our own campaign that drives our members,

in these countries, to indeed work with their governments.

That also means that we believe that social dialogue

and inclusion of the social partners in everything what we do

on the SDG and specifically on the SDG 8

steering committee, that our involvement as social partners is important.

And last but not least, we have to build coalitions because it's not only up to us

trade unions, it's not only up to companies to deliver on that,

this is a societal challenge and a societal objective.

So there are more broader organizations that can also assist us

in achieving our objectives on SDG 8.

Thank you and last but not least, Roberto.

The question is

how to mobilize better, how to activate stakeholders, stakeholders.

I can echo what my colleagues have said before,

but I would add something that has perhaps not been said.

You need to build trust.

Trust is the driver of any efficient

partnerships and this trust is not always there.

This choice needs a lot of work behind the scenes.

It needs better communication.

What are the objectives?

It needs better

language,

because sometimes the language we speak is very different.

It needs also respect of the rule of law, which is not always there.

You need to also respect institutions. And it needs also

a better understanding of what are the interests of each party.

If you build on that, you will have much better

approach in terms of mobilizing the stakeholders but also delivering together.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Dialogue,

it's what the ILC is all about.

So thank you very much to our panellists, thank you very much

for your very interesting -

We could be talking about this for hours.

Unfortunately, that's all we have time for today.

That's all for today's episode.

Thank you for listening.

We hope you'll join us again

for more conversations on key issues shaping the world of work.

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