Introduction

The International Labour Organization (ILO) was created in 1919 through the Treaty of Versailles in response to the severe working conditions prevalent at the time.  The preamble of the ILO Constitution reflects a concern that social unrest would result from the exploitation of the working class.  It asserts that “lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice,” and that world peace is imperilled by labour conditions involving “injustice, hardship and privation to large numbers of people.”^[1]  Because countries feared placing themselves at a competitive disadvantage by undertaking labour reform on their own, an international solution was sought.^[2] 

From these historical beginnings, the ILO has tried to keep pace with the changes to modern economic life.  Recently the ILO has paid increasing attention to the effects of globalization on labour rights, and in particular the deregulation of trade.  Concern for social justice has also led the ILO to broaden the range of work-related issues it deals with to include topics like sweat shops, children’s rights, women’s rights, and the spread of infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS. 

Given the substantial amount of shared ground between the international labour movement and other civil society organizations (CSOs), there are important opportunities for CSOs to engage the ILO.   For example, Amnesty International Canada’s Human Rights and Business initiative explicitly builds upon the international groundwork that the ILO has already put in place with regard to “health and safety, freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, non-discrimination, disciplinary practices, avoidance of child labour and avoidance of forced labour.”^[3]

Canada was a founding member of the ILO, but has had an uneasy relationship with the organization.  This partially reflects the difficulty of coordinating ten provincial approaches to labour policy, but there is also a fundamental tension between the ILO’s view of collective bargaining rights and the development of these rights in Canada:  the ILO sees the right to collective bargaining and to strike as fundamental human rights, whereas Canadian governments have in many cases tried to limit or ignore them in the name of “the public interest.”  As a result, there have been a disproportionately high number of complaints filed with the ILO against Canada in comparison to its Western counterparts. 

This handbook begins by describing what the ILO is, what it does, how it is structured, how it works, and how it is financed. This is followed by an explanation of who speaks for Canada at the ILO and who the key governmental players are in determining what Canada says at the institution. Finally, the handbook ends with tips for civil society activists that are interested in better understanding and influencing the ILO. The information that follows will be periodically updated and we welcome your comments and suggestions.

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 What is the ILO?

The International Labour Organization is the United Nations Specialised Agency responsible for workers’ rights, and other work and employment issues.  Its stated objective is to “promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security, and human dignity.”^[4]  The ILO provides a forum where government, worker and employer representatives negotiate international labour standards.  It also promotes and enforces these standards and encourages technical cooperation among ILO members.^[5] 

The ILO is guided by two fundamental documents:  its Constitution, adopted in 1919, and the 1944 Declaration of Philadelphia.  The latter affirmed the ILO’s fundamental principles and set out new objectives following the Second World War.  ILO fundamental principles include: labour is not a commodity; freedom of expression and of association are essential to sustained progress; poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere; and the war against want should be fought domestically and internationally with labour and employers acting as equal partners with governments.

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What Does the ILO Do?

The main task of the ILO is to establish and enforce international labour standards.  The international labour standards created by the ILO take the form of either Conventions, which are international treaties that bind those states that have ratified them, or Recommendations, which are non-binding guides for national policy and legislation development.^[6]  The standards are enforced through a regular review of members’ laws and practices as well as through complaint mechanisms.  A good example of this sort of review is the Better Factories Cambodia Project, previously known as the Garment Sector Working Conditions Improvement Project.  This project issues reports on the working conditions in Cambodia’s garment sector, based on inspections by independent ILO monitors.

The ILO also provides technical assistance to its members, particularly developing countries.  It provides workforce training, assistance in drafting legislation, and help strengthening member countries’ regulatory systems for enforcing labour laws.  A primary example of this aspect of the ILO’s work is its International Training Centre in Turin, Italy, which provides capacity-building education for governments, employers’ organizations and workers organizations.

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How is the ILO Structured?

The central and most unique feature of the ILO governance structure is its tripartite nature.  Government, employer, and worker representatives from each member state are assigned equal voting rights in all of the main ILO bodies.^[7]  Each representative group, or “constituency,” is independent of the other two and can vote and express itself as it sees fit.  The worker and employer representatives are nominated by their government, but are “chosen in agreement with the industrial organizations… which are most representative of employers or workpeople… in their respective countries.”^[8]   In Canada, this means that the relevant labour and employer organizations choose their own representatives.

The ILO consists of three principal parts: the International Labour Conference (ILC), the Governing Body, and the Secretariat (See Box 3: The Main Bodies of the ILO).  The ILC is the ILO’s highest decision-making body.  It establishes international labour standards, adopts the Organization’s budget and elects the Governing Body.  It is the plenary body of the ILO, where each member state is represented by two government delegates, one employer delegate and one worker delegate.  The ILC meets yearly in Geneva for about three weeks in June.  Five regular committees operate beneath the ILC, all of which (except the finance committee) also work on a tripartite basis (see Box 4: Organization of the International Labour Conference).

The Governing Body, the second principal part of the ILO, serves as the ILO’s executive council.  It takes decisions on ILO policy, sets the ILC agenda, prepares the organization’s work program and budget for submission to the ILC, and elects the Director-General of the Secretariat.  It has six committees under it which meet in the two or three weeks preceding its sessions (See Box 5: Committees of the Governing Body).^[9]  The Governing Body holds a full session (four days) in November, another in April/March, and a one day meeting after the ILC session in June.^[10]

The ILO Secretariat is called the International Labour Office.  It supports the work of ILO    bodies, undertakes research, drafts the reports and texts that are instrumental in the adoption of international labour standards, and provides technical assistance.  The Office employs 1,900 officials, spread throughout the Geneva headquarters and its 40 field offices around the world.  An additional 600 experts are involved in the ILO’s programme of technical cooperation through missions to various countries.  The Secretariat is led by a Director-General, who is elected by the Governing Body to a renewable five-year term.

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How Does the ILO Work?

There are two aspects to the ILO’s work.  The first is the production of international labour standards.  The second is the supervision and enforcement of these standards.  We will consider each in turn.

Labour standards are established by the International L abour Conference.  The Conference’s agenda is set by the Governing Body a full two years prior to the opening of the session in question.  Prospective agenda items are often proposed by one of the three representative groups, but can also emerge from ILO research, regional conferences, industrial committee meetings, etc.  The procedure is set out in Appendix A. 

It typically takes at least four years from the time a proposal begins to be considered by the Governing Council before it will result in a new international labour standard.  The process is slow, but is intended to give plenty of lead time for the various stakeholders to provide quality input.  The goal is to arrive at standards that enjoy broad support and can be readily implemented. 

As for the supervision and enforcement of ILO Conventions and Recommendations, there are two mechanisms in place.  The first is the system of regular supervision: states submit reports to the ILO on the implementation of the Conventions they have ratified, as well as the fundamental Conventions by which all members are bound.^[11]  The ILO also requests reports on the fulfillment of certain Conventions that states have not ratified in order to determine the degree to which their provisions have been applied and to identify barriers to their ratification.   The Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations – an independent body of 20 experts appointed by the Governing Body for renewable three year terms – requests the members’ reports on a schedule determined by the Governing Body,^[12] and meets in Geneva each year in November/December to consider the reports that it receives.^[13]  The Committee follows up with governments and submits a report on members’ compliance with ILO standards to the ILC.    The details of this supervisory system are set out in Box 6 above.

The Committee’s report is submitted annually to the ILC, where it is discussed by the Conference Committee on the Application of Standards (CCAS) – a tripartite committee made up of over 200 delegates to the ILC, which generally works on the basis of consensus.  The Conference Committee considers the report in general, and then reviews individual problem cases that are cited in the report.  For the examination of these problem cases, representatives of the government concerned are invited to appear before the Conference Committee, and rarely refuse.  By convention, a list of which countries will be invited to appear is negotiated between the worker and employer delegations to the ILC.  This process can provide an important window on why a government is not living up to the provisions of a given convention, and is an opportunity to push for compliance. 

Complaint mechanisms are the ILO’s second means of enforcement. There are three types: Article 24 complaints, Article 26 complaints, and freedom of association complaints (see Appendix B).  Article 24 complaints serve mainly to call the attention of the Governing Body (and others) to a problem.^[14]  Any national or international workers’ or employers’ organization can make an Article 24 complaint.

The Article 26 procedure more closely approximates a judicial process.  It results in published recommendations that are binding on the state concerned.  Only ILC delegates can launch an Article 26 complaint: these are administered by Commissions of Inquiry.  Because the Commission’s recommendations are binding, they can be appealed by the state concerned to the International Court of Justice for a final judgement.  Compliance with recommendations/judgements is monitored by the Governing Body and its Commission of Experts, and the ILO can take such measures as it sees fit to enforce them, including suspension of membership privileges and calls for sanctions.  Such measures, authorized by Article 33 of the ILO Constitution, have only been used once in the history of the ILO, in the case of Burma (see Box 7: The Article 26 Procedure in Action).

The final complaint mechanism of the ILO is the freedom of association complaint, which is administered by the Governing Body’s Committee on Freedom of Association.  It is the most common complaint within the ILO.^[15]  The Governing Body is empowered to take such measures as it deems appropriate.

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Where Does the ILO Get its Money?

The ILO budget works on a two-year cycle.  The ILO’s regular budget for the 2004-05 biennium was about US$530 million.  This represented a substantial increase after several years of decline (US$434 million in 2002-03).  Canada’s contribution is 2.5% of the regular budget – currently around CDN$9 million a year.  The largest contributors are the United States (33 percent), Japan (19.2 percent), Germany (9.6 percent), France (6.4 percent), the United Kingdom (5.5 percent) and Italy (5 percent). 

The ILO also administers significant “extra-budgetary” resources for technical cooperation (US$255 million in 2002-03).  A modest portion comes from other international organizations like the United Nations Development Programme, but most of these resources come from voluntary state contributions to programs and trust funds.

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Who Speaks for Canada at the ILO?

The Government of Canada is allowed two delegates at the International Labour Conference.  Traditionally the delegation is headed by the Minister of Labour, but in recent decades the Canadian Minister of Labour has not always attended the ILC.  More often, the Canadian delegation is headed by the director of the International Labour Affairs division of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), accompanied by an official from Canada’s Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva.  Higher level officials, such the Assistant Deputy Minister of Labour and the Deputy Permanent Representative in Geneva, typically attend as advisors and substitute delegates.  Senior provincial officials frequently attend as “advisors,” as do a number of other federal officials.

The Minister of Labour usually attends the Governing Body sessions, accompanied by the Assistant Deputy Minister for the Labour Program at HRSDC and other officials from Labour, Foreign Affairs Canada, and Canada’s Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva, including the Deputy Permanent Representative.  These officials also represent Canada at meetings of the Governing Body committees, which take place in the weeks preceding the Governing Body sessions.

Because of the ILO’s tripartite structure, Canada is also represented by worker and employer representatives.  The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) decides who attends the ILC on behalf of workers, while the Canadian Employers Council (CEC) designates employer representatives.  Each of these groups is allowed one representative, supported by a substitute representative and a number of advisors.  Currently, the worker representative is a CLC Vice-President, who is supported by the Director of the International Department.  The employer representative is a Vice President of the CEC, assisted by industry representatives. 

Worker and employer members of the Governing Body are elected by these constituencies in ILC elections.  Canada currently [April 2005] has a worker member and an employer deputy member on the Governing Body.  These representatives also serve as delegates to the ILC. 

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Who Decides What Canada Says at the ILO?

Ultimate responsibility for the Canadian government’s representation at the ILO rests with the Minister of Labour.  Most policy work on ILO issues is handled by the International Labour Affairs (ILA) branch of HRSDC, which cooperates with other federal departments, the provinces and territories, and Canadian worker and employer organizations, as required.  The ILA also “provides information to the ILO on Canadian labour law and practice; monitors, assesses, and reports on Canadian compliance with ratified and non-ratified ILO conventions; and ensures that federal and provincial government responses to ILO supervisory bodies…are provided in a timely manner.”^[16]  The provinces play a substantial role in law and policy-making related to the ILO, as they have primary jurisdiction for labour issues under Canada’s Constitution. 

Foreign Affairs Canada (FAC) oversees Canadian representation abroad, including at the Canadian Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva.  Accordingly, the ILA works closely with FAC officials both in Ottawa and in Geneva.  The main contact point at Foreign Affairs in Ottawa is the Senior Adviser for the ILO of the UN Specialized Agencies Branch. 

Parliament and the provincial legislatures also play a significant role.  ILO member countries are required to submit all newly adopted ILO Conventions to the “competent authorities” for ratification and/or other action within one year (or 18 months in exceptional circumstances) of the closing of the Conference where they were adopted.  Similarly, ILO Recommendations must be submitted to the competent authorities for “the enactment of legislation or other action” within the same time period.  In Canada’s case, the “competent authority” could be Parliament, the Provincial legislatures, or both.^[17]  HRSDC submits a yearly report to Parliament describing any new instruments and providing an assessment of the extent to which existing Canadian law and practice comply with their provisions.  Canada has a long-standing tradition that it will only ratify a Convention dealing with matters under both federal and provincial/territorial jurisdictions “if all jurisdictions concur with ratification and undertake to implement the Convention's requirements in their respective jurisdiction.”^[18]

While Canada was a founding member, the Government has a relatively low profile at the ILO and at times, has had an uneasy relationship with the Organization.  Canada is not, for example, one of the ten countries “of chief industrial concern” that occupy permanent seats on the Governing Body of the ILO, which functions as its executive council. 

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Tips for Civil Society

Contacting the International Department of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) is a good place to start if you are interested in taking action related to the ILO.  Not only do they have direct access to all of the meetings and processes of the ILO, they are also likely to know what has been or is being done on your issue, and can probably suggest some good strategies for having an influence. 

While NGO participation at the ILO is quite limited, a number of international NGOs, such as Amnesty International and the International Save the Children Alliance, regularly engage in ILO-related activities and have made significant contributions.  Participation at the ILC or meetings of the Governing Body is generally reserved for larger international NGOs, and is limited in scope.^[19]   NGOs approved for participation at the ILC can only send one delegate for each agenda item they have expressed an interest in, and have no speaking rights at the Conference (unless one of the delegations is willing to give them some of their speaking time).  The ILO has a “Special List” of some 170 NGOs with which it has established relationships, and these can be important partners.

One important opportunity to influence government policy on labour-related issues is the reporting process of the ILO’s regular supervisory system.  If you are disappointed with the federal or a provincial government’s performance in fulfilling a Convention that Canada has ratified, check the reporting schedule, get in touch with the CLC, and make sure your voice is heard when Canada’s report goes to the ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations.  The CLC and other workers’ groups can submit comments on the government’s report, and they may be able to benefit from your knowledge and expertise on a given subject.

You should also consider using the complaints mechanisms if your issue relates to unfulfilled commitments under ratified ILO Conventions or to infringements on freedom of association.  Conventions of particular interest to NGOs include 169 (The Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989), 182 (Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999) and 111 (Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958).  Remember that any workers’ or employers’ organization can file representations under the Article 24 procedure or with the Freedom of Association Committee, but that only ILC delegates can file Article 26 complaints.  Again, get in touch with the CLC or other workers’ organizations to see if they will work with you.

You can also directly lobby the federal and provincial governments to ratify ILO Conventions or to implement the ones already ratified.  Opportunities exist to work with the government, as well as worker and employer groups to propose new standards that should be considered by the ILO, or to pressure other governments to satisfy their commitments under ILO Conventions.  In the case of foreign governments, it may be worthwhile to ask the Canadian government to file a complaint.

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Conclusion

Friends of the Earth Canada hopes that this handbook will serve as a useful point of reference for organizations interested in better understanding and influencing the ILO.  This is a work-in-progress that will be periodically updated in order to better serve the needs of civil society organizations in Canada and abroad.  We want to encourage readers to provide feedback and advice on how to improve this working draft.  Please send any questions and comments to gsaul@foecanada.org.

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Acknowledgement

The many sections of the handbook represent the collective effort and input of a wide range of human rights, labour, environment and development organizations from across Canada and beyond. The process of bringing this information together was coordinated by Friends of the Earth Canada and advised by a steering committee that included representatives from the Halifax Initiative Coalition, the Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC), and Kairos: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives. We would like to thank the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation for their generous support. While Friends of the Earth deeply appreciates the support of all of the organizations and individuals involved in the development of this project, we take sole responsibility for any inaccuracies or mischaracterizations that may have survived the editing process.

We are still in the process of compiling individual acknowledgements and will include them in the re-edited First Edition that will follow soon.

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