The Philippine director of the International Labor Organization (ILO), Mr. Khalid Hassan, has inspiringly stressed the need for the tripartite partners to cascade, embrace and respond to the megatrends in the changing labor market conditions due to the dynamic shifts in geopolitics, technology and demography.

He described such market policy interference as Just Transitions or Global Accelerators (GA) on jobs. He also issued such a call in the recent Arangkada conference of the joint foreign chambers in the Philippines, as reported by my columnist friend and Human Resources guru, Ernie Cecilia.

It is a universal and timeless reminder to the tripartite partners of labor, government and employers centuries after the first industrial revolution in the mid-1800s, which today still carries some vestiges of the slave-master relationship between workers and employers.

The call heavily implies full trust and collaboration between and among the tripartite partners for the GA to flourish and be sustained until it becomes the DNA or a permanent arrangement in the workplace.

Employers wholeheartedly agree and fully support Mr. Khassan’s call for action to achieve inclusiveness and ensure that no one is left behind.

His message is probably heard by the 187 ILO member countries out of the 196 total countries in the world. Unfortunately, it excludes the nine non-ILO member countries and some member states that, according to critiques, have demonstrated historically low ratification rates of several ILO conventions.

While millions of workers may be presumed not to benefit from Mr. Hassan’s GA strategy in the many years to come, this does not diminish his noble mantra of inclusiveness in the workplace.

Admittedly, pleasing everyone is impossible but satisfying the needs of the majority, or 96 percent, of all nations in the world and trying to be fair to the minorities may be considered a great achievement.

Still, the entire success of the GA strategy hinges completely on the full collaboration of the tripartite partners.

Reality check. There will be some profit-driven employers who may be unwilling, MSMEs that are financially incapable, and a number of uncooperative ILO member states who will refuse or ignore the GA principles.

For sure, there is an equivalent or probably a greater number of labor unions led by ideologues still trapped in the 19th-century class struggle or those who are simply anti-establishment who will ignore Mr. Hassan’s goal as a matter of predictable habit.

But this does not in any way invalidate or belittle Mr. Hassan’s aspiration to reach out to all employers and workers for a genuine partnership and realize his goal of not leaving anyone behind.

Mr. Hassan may just need to temper his overenthusiastic expectations that his moving call for a Global Accelerators strategy is the silver bullet that will immediately and significantly change the world of work during our lifetime.