Last month, 193 member states present at the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Summit 2015 adopted a set of 17 goals known as the Sustainable Development Goals. These goals are a new global plan of action to reduce poverty and hunger, advance equality and protect the environment. In order to achieve these goals by 2030, business leaders have also been asked to support the UN. In view of this, Sharan Burrow, who currently represents 176 million workers in 162 countries and territories in the world, joined a not-for-profit initiative formed by a global group of business leaders to catalyse a better way of doing business known as the B-Team.
Ventures Africa interviewed Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to find out how different segments of the society – business leaders and civil society can work together.
Ventures Africa (VA) : Part of your role with the B-Team is to collaborate with the B Team leaders on a new initiative, which will motivate business action towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Can you tell us about this new initiative?
Sharan Burrow (SB) : The B team is committed to both the SDGs and to climate action. The Commission will consider how these two ambitions can be realised, the links between the two and the role for business. If there are business leaders, who can show that another model of business is possible then that is worth supporting.
VA: Goal 12 of the Sustainable Development Goal is to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. What can business leaders do to ensure that this goal is met?
SB: We all need to learn to live within planetary boundaries. The transition to renewable energy and a circular economy means resource productivity becomes an important ambition and it requires sustainable consumption and production patterns. Unions will bargain for resource productivity both in the transition and as a source of wealth and wages growth over time.
VA: In your opinion, what is the role of business leaders and civil society in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030?
SB: To tackle poverty, to create jobs and decent work, to see women realise equality and much more it will take all of us. 2030 is just 14 years away and if business, unions and civil society are not committed to realizing the 17 Global Goals progress will stall. Collective bargaining is a powerful tool for engaging all parties is agreement and workers need progressive business leaders on the other side of the bargaining table.
VA: How can civil society and business leaders work together in achieving these goals?
SB: By identifying the issues, ensuring decent work and planning for sustainable workplaces workers and employers can chart a course for sustainability that resolves the fractures in the current business model – a model that is dependent on fossil fuels and driven by profits from poverty wages and unsafe and insecure work.
VA: As the General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, how do you intend to help businesses meet these goals?
SB: The ITUC and its affiliates have a strong history of social dialogue and collective bargaining. We have designed the elements of a ‘just transition’ and will work with willing employers to implement workplace change. Where employers are operating on an exploitative model we will work with governments to ensure the rule of law and hold business to account. Labour and environmental standards are fundamental to the goals.
VA: Have you started making these changes in your organization?
SB: The ITUC is focussed on ending corporate greed, seeing social protection, a minimum living wage, collective bargaining and safe and secure firmly in place to reduce inequality. Formalizing informal work, eliminating slavery and ensuring all migrants, including refugees, the right to work are essential to rebuilding decent work.
Climate change is also a frontline for the ITUC for there are no jobs on a dead planet.
And inclusive economies must include women, young people and minorities with full employment and decent work the foundation of equal treatment.
Injustice, abuse of human and labour rights have no place in our world.
VA: The issue of corruption has been eating into businesses- do you think the SDGs can be achieved with this at stake or are there other plans to tackle corruption?
SB: Corruption is growing and must be driven out of business and governmental practice by the rule of law. We have been at the forefront of the campaign to expose corruption in FIFA and the associated enslavement of workers in Qatar building infrastructure for the World Cup. This is just the tip of the iceberg and all corruption must be exposed and remedied.
VA: Why did you join the B-team?
SB: Business organisations have become part of the problem as they argue to diminish rights, regulations and responsibility for the environment. Labour has become just a commodity to the majority of CEO’s and with 60% of production dependent on supply chains where poverty wages, insecure and unsafe work are the accepted as a basis for profit. This American corporate model must be defeated. When a group of CEO’s want to chart a different course, to take responsibility for a just and sustainable business model that is worth supporting.
VA: Why did you choose to help businesses meet the Global Sustainable Development Goal?
SB: Business is part of the problem but with a commitment to the sustainable development goals and to climate action, it just might be possible to chart a different course. A course that affords workers and their communities optimism, dignity, social protection, sustainability and decent work.
