The International Labour Organization has established a Global Commission on the Future of Work, a high-level international body that is expected to undertake an in-depth examination of the future of work.

According to the ILO, the commission’s examinations can provide the analytical basis for the delivery of social justice in the 21st century.

The ILO also announced that it has appointed Adecco Group CEO, Alain Dehaze, to the Global Commission on the Future of Work. The 28-member commission will be headed by ILO director-general Guy Ryder and co-chaired by Stefan Löfven, Prime Minister of Sweden and Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, President of Mauritius.

“It is fundamentally important that we confront these challenges from the conviction that the future of work is not decided for us in advance,” ILO Director-General Guy Ryder, said. “It is a future that we must make according to the values and preferences that we choose and through policies that we design and implement,” he said. 

Gurib-Fakim encouraged “all countries and stakeholders to come up with comprehensive recommendations and novel ideas on how to address the opportunities and challenges of the future of work. We can accomplish this by ‘putting people first’, by recognising that labour is more than simply a commodity in the labour market in the spirit of the ILO Constitution, or even just a factor of production.”

Löfven commented, “We cannot stop development, nor should we even try. What we need to do is come together: to harness innovation to improve the daily lives of millions, to use new technology to build cleaner and more sustainable societies, and at the same time create new jobs with better conditions for everyone. These objectives lie at the heart of this Commission."

The Commission was set up under the ILO’s Future of Work Centenary Initiative launched by the ILO Director-General in 2013. The Commission will produce an independent report on how to achieve a future of work that provides decent and sustainable work opportunities for all. This report will be submitted to the centenary session of the International Labour Conference in 2019. Among other members of the commission include Kristin Skogen Lund, Chief Executive Officer, Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) and Richard Samans, Managing Director, World Economic Forum.