Multinational Enterprise Social Challenges Xx1st Century Oli Decl

Globalisation 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. Now is the time to examine these changes and find the patterns that may serve to establish such standards. This important undertaking drew together a group of concerned delegates to a special International Conference in Leuven, Belgium, on 3 May 1999, 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 Cooperation (including its Trade Union Advisory Committee), the European Union, and the International Employers' Association. This book is the record of this significant 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 a valuable additional feature, it publishes codes of conduct for several multinational enterprises. Multinational Enterprises and the Social Challenges of the XXIst Century 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.