ILO's Special Action Programme
on Social and Labour Issues
in export processing zones
CONCLUSIONS
The world of investment and trade is getting smaller, more transparent and integrated. It is also intensifying competition for investment and products. It is a competitive jungle in which it is no
longer the large which eat the small, but the quick which eat the slow. This places a heavy onus on governments, investors and workers to develop an environment in which they can operate and innovate quickly and effectively. Not only does each of the three have to improve their performance, they have to do so in a coordinated, complimentary and synergistic way, which suggests a greater degree of tripartite cooperation in zones at the planning, implementation and monitoring stages. People, their knowledge and creativity, and the information at their disposal, are critical to the ability of countries and enterprises to compete, and those are priority areas in which strategic investments are urgently required.
Globalization, with its increased competition
in investment and product markets, and the changes in how companies structure
themselves and organize their production, combined with the contingent factors
mentioned above, can lead to an improvement in the employment relationship,
that is in labour relations, human resource development, terms and conditions
of work. This is a trend identified in the most innovative firms, against
which many other enterprises are benchmarking themselves, and we therefore
hope to see this trend extended ie. More and more firms will innovate in
their employment relationship in order to meet the demands of global competition.