THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL PROTECTION IN LATIN AMERICA: Union Perspective Tripartite Regional Meeting Santiago de Chile, 12 to 14 Decembre 2007

THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL PROTECTIONIN LATIN AMERICA: Union Perspective

Tripartite Regional Meeting

Santiago de Chile, 12 to 14 Decembre 2007

The future of Social Protection in Latin America:

Social Security is a fundamental Human RightHuman Right, and the main role of the State is essential to guarantee it ( for both as a tutor and garantor.)

ILO International PoliciesILO International Policies in the Social Security issue are a practical and updated reference,of tripartite consensus, that offer flexibility, progressiviness and clear rules in the processes of the extension of the coverage.

STRATEGIC CENTRE FROM THE UNION PERSPECTIVE

Governments must promote policies of Decent Work Decent Work to increase opportunities of access to jobs with better conditions of income, security and productivity, helping appropiate “formalization”of employment with rights, in agreement with National Plans of Decent Work, and with the appropiate treatment of gender.

It is a necessary condition the participation, in equal conditionsparticipation, in equal conditions, of union organizations and of employers in the design and control of the patterns of Social Security in each country.


Union Perspective

The main challenge of countries with larger incomes is to look after the sustainablility of the regime of social protection. In Latin American countries, the challenge is to extend the real coverage of social security.

Challenges of Social Security Systems, from de diagnose:

To Give practical and sustainable answers, different in function with the capacity of contributions of its beneficiaries, looking for the balance between contributive and no contributive benefits that be enough, and that are properly complement in order to reach the coverage of risks as much as possible and of best quality, to all.

The redistribution of the income must be made through interventions of the public social security, along with efficient prosecuting systems but regressive, what demands to restate the current Latinamerican prosecuting systems.

The redistribution of the income can not be delegated from the State to private structures, neither to the market nor to the community.

Sources of Financing assigned to priority expenses of social security must be well-defined: investments of the State and contributions of employers and employees.


Union Perspective

Processes of the reform of pensions, based on individual savings, taken place in Latin America, have reduced the security of income in covered people, being the only secure pension, the guaranteed one by the State.

Processes of the reform have had high costs of transition in a long – term,high administrative costs,and low rates of expected substitution, especially for women, temporary workers, seasonal workers,self-employed people, and have not given any response to the necessities of workers and workers of the informal sector, etc.

Challenges of Social Security Systems, from the diagnose:

The real situation between pensioners and active workers that contribute to the system in many regimens of social security, it is much higher than potential demographic rates due to evasion and failure to comply with the payment of contributions and taxes that are financed by those systems.

There are policies of privatization and that of contentious of the social expense, that have affected the systems of medical assistance excluding services and increasing the household expenses.


Union Perspective

The priority function of the State is to extend the coverage of the social security to every citizen, through a pattern of all-around social security, of public and universal responsibility.

The backbone of social security has to continue being the social solidarity tutored by the State in its local, nation and worldwide domain.

The Security of the income requires a social protection under the way of state public interventions in social security.

Confirmation of the responsibility of the State Nation

The State is the only institution that can make general nationwide plan of development of Social Security, with the participation of workers and employers , in which the coverage of basic benefits can only be understood as a first step in the process of extension of the coverage to every person, upon all risks, with enough benefits, permanent and financially sustainable.

Private Insurance is not under conditions of covering properly the social risks. Sectors with less resources of the population are excluded for the limitation or lack of its contributing capacity.


Union Perspective

Integrating and developing social benefits for children in the Social Security frame, that facilitate the access to education and help fighting against child work, in order to contribute to brake the cycle of poverty.

Progressive Social Protection in Latin America:

An access to a National Health System (preventive and curative), as a means to help families to remain over the edge of poverty. The supply of free access to basic health services should, first be extended to children, handicapped and elderly people. An special mentioning deserves protection to motherhood.

An access to housing that allows the population and their health be more stable, with an special mention to the access to sanitary conditions, housing and drinking water.

A support to the income to avoid poverty in elderly people, especially of the informal economy.

In the first place, the necessity of taking up in a tripartite way a total conception of Social Security, in every of its coverage in front of the different situations of necessity, as International Regulations stablish, giving rise to short, medium and long term policies with well-defined strategic objectives.


Union PerspectiveProposals, by the union representative, for the cooperation and technical assistance of ILO:

Effective campaign of promotion for the ratification and accomplishment of the agreement 102, Minimum Standard in Social Security.

Campaign to promote the classification of Agreement 102 as an Essential Agreement of ILO.

- Regarding ILO Regulations and Tools

To inform and circulate about the availability of tools of ILO, especially the Nationwide Programmes of Decent Work.

Campaigns of circulation and awareness on Social Security to the society , to facilitate a big nationwide and regional dialogue on this issue.


Union Perspective

To Promote the design of Plans of Nation Action in Social Security, with a tripartite participation, in the context of the Nationwide Plans of Decent Work, that rise to Nationwide Strategies of Social Security, with the identification of commited objectives of extension to short, medium and long term, mechanisms to reach them, necessary resources and sources of pre stablished financing.

Proposals, by the union representative, for the cooperation and technical assistance of ILO:

- Regarding ILO technical cooperation

To elaborate an especific programme of widespreading protection to motherhood for all Latin America.



- Regarding ILO technical cooperation

To promote an specific treatment of the problems of the rural sector and that of the peasants with concrete proposals of work, without missing the reality of ancient populations.

To promote the Law of Integrated National Systems of Health.

To colaborate with the design and implementation of effective mechanisms of inspection, control and investigation that they might have to implement the Stated in order to make effective the duties that employers (private or public) and workers, as a mechanism of fighting against evasion, interest and fraud. With an explicit mention to the debt of the States with their corresponding systems of social security.



- Regarding training and technical support:

Training and continue formative following up of union technical teams in Social Security in phases and levels, that benefit conditions of equality in the social dialogue. Design of formative programmes in collaboration with ACTRAV.

EspecificTraining of union frames about financing, actuarial and prosecution systems. Design of formative programmes in collaboration with ACTRAV.

To make potential the education of union trainers in Social Security in favor with the multiplying effect in the spreading of the education and knowledge.

Technical support to union action coordinated inside every country, in the creation of alternative proposals of reform of social security.



- Regarding training and technical support

To improve the mechanisms of spreading to the Union Organizations of analysis of the current patterns and of the situation of coverage per country and of quality of benefits , identifying challenges, strengths and weaknessess.

Technical support to tranverse of gender in the union proposals in Social Security.

To promote spaces of interchanging of experiences among different national realities, helping the constitution of networks of union coordination in Social Security, in the subregional and regional domains.



- Regarding cooperation and technical cooperation with other institutions

To promote the coordination between ILO and OISS to favour the commitment linked of the governments in the application of theLatin American Multilateral Agreement of Social Security, with the participation of the organizations of the employers and workers.

To favour the interchanging of experiences among the countries of Latin America and East Europe which have applied privatized reforms. This interchange may take shape in a tripartite encounter in 2008, in a possible collaboration with other institutions of Social Security.


Union Perspective

We express our commitment of participating with responsibility in the construction of a Complete Pattern of Social Security , Solidarity, Redistributive, Universal and of responsibility of the State, that balances the society, through the guarantee of protection to all workers with equity of gender, with independence on the way of his/her inclusion to labor activity (formal or informal) or of his/her geographic location or his/her origin, as well as all families, with special attention to children and adolescents,to elderly people and handicapped, that settles the basis of the Social Pattern that every one of us deserve .

The future of Social Protection inLAtin America demands the commitment of Governments and Organizations of Employers and Workers

Santiago de Chile, 14 of Decembre 2007

Documents

THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL PROTECTION IN LATIN AMERICA: Union Perspective Tripartite Regional Meeting Santiago de Chile, 12 to 14 Decembre 2007