Report on the 95th Session of the International Labour Conference

Mrs. Pauline S. Petty, Director, Bahamas Employers' Confederation, attended the 95th Session of the International Labour Conference (ILC) of the International Labour Organization (ILO) convened in Geneva, Switzerland from May 30th through June 16th, 2006, as the Employer representative of the delegation from The Bahamas. Below is an extract of her report on the 95th Session of the ILC to BECon's Directors.

Left to Right: Harcourt Brown, Director of Labour; Althea Albury, Department of Labour; John Pinder, Bahamas Public Services Union; and Pauline Petty, Bahamas Employers Confederation.

Each year a tripartite delegation from Member States (ILO terminology for Member Countries) attend the ILC. The ILO mandates that the minimum requirement for a delegation to be seated with voting rights is four, which normally consists of the Minister responsible for Labour, the Commissioner or Director of Labour; one Employers' representative and one Workers' representative. The latter two delegates are nominated by the organizations that are officially recognized by the government as being most representative of the respective constituencies. In The Bahamas, the Bahamas Employers' Confederation (BECon) and the National Congress of Trade Unions (NCTU) respectively are the representative bodies. The cost of attendance at the annual conference is borne by the Government, inclusive of air and ground transportation, accommodation and subsistence for the duration of the conference.

All Employer delegates at the ILC met as a group each morning so that the Chairs of the respective committees could provide an ongoing report on the preceding day's committee work. These meetings also gave us guidance on the employers' position in respect of voting at the end of the ILC. This was invaluable since I was the sole Bahamas Employer delegate and could only participate effectively in one committee. By far, the "meat" of the ILC is the work at committee level, where instruments are formulated and debated, leading to the adoption of International Standards. In this report I will provide highlights of the ILC, in particular the workings of the Committee on Occupational Safety & Health in which I participated.

In view of the increased emphasis on Occupational Safety & Health (OSH) from both a regional and international perspective, I served on the Employers OSH Committee. John Pinder, The Bahamas Worker's delegate served as a member of the Workers Committee on OSH. This meant that the entire Bahamas delegation met during the plenary debate of the OSH Committee. The first draft of the proposed Convention on OSH was presented at the ILC in 2004, and again in 2005 when the text was debated and amended. Therefore, this session of the ILC represented the final discussion leading to adoption of the Convention and Recommendation.

At plenary discussions at committee level, delegates from the three social partners - Government, Employers and Workers - meet to debate and, where appropriate, adopt amendments put forward by the respective groups to the text of the proposed Instrument. At the commencement of the first plenary session, the Chair of the Employers' OSH Committee put forward a motion to accept the text of the proposed Convention and Recommendation as presented, having been amended following the previous years' conferences. This was an historic motion that brought the proceedings to a standstill so that the Plenary Committee Chair could seek advice on the procedural appropriateness/legality of such a motion. It caused quite a stir, especially from the Workers' group, who were obviously taken by surprise. The implications of accepting our motion was clear - we would all have a couple of weeks' vacation until the time to vote on the adoption of the Instruments!

The motion was a strategic move by the Employers in recognition of the fact that: 1) considerable work had been done over the past two years resulting in the draft text; and 2) many of the proposed amendments again put forward were revisiting issues which the Workers had tried and failed to have included in the text and/or those that were trivial or which would make the instrument 'unratifiable' if included. Having very eloquently and comprehensively put forward our rationale for the motion for the record, and following objections from the Workers and approximately half of the Government representatives, our Chair withdrew the motion prior to a vote. However, the wisdom of our motion became evident in that the majority of the amendments proposed by the Workers were either withdrawn following debate, withdrawn without debate or were voted against. For example, of the first batch of thirty proposed amendments from the Workers, only nine were adopted.

The Committee work was quite intensive since it is necessary to go through the entire draft instruments, literally word by word and to both formulate proposed amendments where we deemed necessary (the proposed Instrument will already have been vetted by ILO personnel to ensure that the amendments agreed at the previous years ILC had been included) and to consider proposed amendments put forward by Government and Workers, all of which were then discussed in the Plenary Committee meetings where they were either adopted or withdrawn or defeated by vote.

The discussions went right down to the wire because we had to adhere to the timetable set for discussion of each section of the proposed instruments to ensure we were able to get through the entire document in time for the amended text to be given to the drafting department to enable them to have the final draft ready for the record vote to adopt the Convention and Recommendation at the end of the Conference. In one instance, this entailed week-end work.

After the final text of the Convention and Recommendation on Occupational Safety and Health was completed, it was then necessary for all delegates to vote for or against them in Plenary, [as well as vote for or against other Instruments produced at the ILC]. Voting on the Instruments took place on the morning of Thursday, June 15th, the day before the end of the Conference. It was done electronically so the results were instantaneous and displayed electronically immediately thereafter. The final voting results were also published in Provisional Record No.26, in which each delegate's name and vote were recorded, making the process quite transparent. The Convention and Recommendation on Occupational Safety and Health were adopted by the Conference.

All delegates to the conference were allowed to vote. This means that for each of the member States officially seated at the ILC, votes were recognized from two Government, one Employer, and one Worker delegate, or four votes per delegation. This, in turn, means that the voting by the Bahamas delegation carried the same weight as, for example, that of the United States or the United Kingdom. To ensure that only official delegates voted, it was necessary to obtain a Personal Identification Number (PIN) prior to voting day. The PIN was affixed to our identification cards that were themselves encoded to identify each delegate. In order to vote, each of us had to enter our PIN into the hand-held voting machine, one of which was provided to each delegation. If an individual attempted to vote more than once for a particular Instrument, the machine would not accept the PIN a second time and would display a message indicating the voter's name and saying that the individual had already voted. Because two Government delegates are allowed to vote, a numerical factor is added to Employer/Worker votes to "equalize" them.

I am happy to have been nominated to attend the ILC. I had not attended the Conference since 1993 and it was good to refresh my mind as to the importance of being able to provide input into these important Instruments and of broadening our horizons in respect of employer issues in other countries around the world. I have endeavoured to share as much of my personal experience at the ILC as possible, however it is recognized that nothing can substitute for first-hand exposure. This is the way to truly bring the end-products - the ILO Instruments - into perspective by being a part of the process by which these Instruments are developed and adopted. Attendance puts a "face" to BECon to our regional and international colleagues in the Caribbean Employers Confederation (CEC), the International Organisation of Employers (IOE), the ILO, as well as regional Employer organizations; as it does for us in respect of them. These contacts can prove invaluable when we are seeking support and cooperation.

Full details of the proceedings of the ILC, including speeches and record vote results, are available on the website of the ILO at www.ilo.org.

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