The second vice president and minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, has claimed this Wednesday her trajectory in the Government of Spain, highlighting the 30 "great agreements of social dialogue" closed in these years, as the main letter of presentation to support her candidacy for the General Directorate of the International Labour Organization (ILO).
Díaz has intervened in the public interactive event held in Geneva (Switzerland) with the candidates for the position of director general of the ILO, where she has emphasized both her previous experience as a lawyer and her work at the head of the Ministry of Labor. She has also highlighted her involvement in "key" directives of the European Union and in the first approval of a United Nations resolution on Social Economy.
"My management supports me," Díaz has stated, emphasizing that practically all of the 30 social dialogue agreements reached during her time in the Executive were closed with tripartite consensus. "I tell you that this is possible," she has underlined before the audience.
The second vice president has also insisted on the urgency to "relaunch" and update the ILO in the face of the various crises it faces, including a delicate financial situation with a deficit of 363 million dollars and the deterioration of labor rights on a global scale.
In this context, Díaz has set as an immediate priority for the ILO "to resolve the very serious financial crisis" that the organization is going through.
As she has explained, the agency must act in two phases: on one hand, to address the lack of liquidity in the short term with a "short-sighted" approach that guarantees daily functioning; and, at the same time, to design a "diverse and alternative" financing architecture that allows it to sustain its obligations after the cuts and the reduction of contributions from some member states. "We cannot fulfill the mandate of the ILO without having the accounts in order," she has emphasized.
The minister has proposed to place social dialogue and the "permanent balance" between employers and unions at the core of the institution's action to respond to the "epochal challenges" facing the labor market.
Among those challenges, the need to recover global productivity has stood out —remembering that it has gone from 1.8% to 1.2%— and to promote the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) under principles of democratization and algorithmic governance agreed upon between companies and staff. To this, she has added the importance of advancing in just transitions and combating labor informality as a way to reduce inequality.
The Minister of Labor has demanded a General Directorate of the ILO with an ambitious profile, capable of preventing the organization from being relegated to "the corner of the multilateral system." For this, she has advocated for intense and coherent coordination with the rest of the international organizations, warning that it is incomprehensible for an ILO that does not engage in integrated dialogue with key actors such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the World Health Organization (WHO).
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