CROSS-BORDER SOCIAL DIALOGUE AND AGREEMENTS: An ...

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Cross-border social dialogue and agreements Because of the highly international nature of the shipping environment, the ILO, since its inception, has treated the welfare of seafarers as an area deserving of special attention, with industry-specific machinery. Thirty-nine Conventions and one protocol to a Convention have been adopted in the maritime sector, out of a total of 188 Conventions. No other industry has received anywhere near this much attention — fishing and dock work are in second and third place with six and five Conventions each, respectively. The rules of procedure and the institutional balance of power is the same, however, for general Conventions and maritime shipping Conventions. Presumably, if a proposed instrument is put forward by consensus in the framework of the maritime section of SECTOR, it will then be adopted at the ILC, since the required consensus between interested parties has already been mobilized. Few conventions are voted down in the ILC (Boockman, 2003). Because of its complexity, the MLC had an extended negotiating procedure. Special high-level tripartite working group meetings took place in December 2001, October 2002, July 2003, and January 2004, in order to have a mature document ready for the September 2004 Preparatory Technical Maritime Conference (PTMC), where the negotiations were to be completed. The debates of the January 2004 working group, as well as the PTMC, followed a multiple working group committee structure, because of the large numbers of issues to be addressed. This allowed for much more intensive discussions, moving forward at the same time on a variety of issues. After failure to come to agreement at the PTMC on certain aspects of the draft convention, the negotiators agreed to postpone consideration by the ILC from February 2005 to February 2006, and held a supplementary tripartite intersessional meeting in April 2005 to work out the remaining points of disagreement. The resulting document was discussed and approved by a vote of the Maritime ILC in February 2006. The 2:1:1 voting configuration on the surface gives governments dominant influence. However, unlike the social partners, governments do not vote, strategize or negotiate as a coherent block. The union side, and to a large extent the employers, have unified strategies, speak through designated group spokespeople, and tend to vote as blocks. 9 As a result, 9 Boockman (2003) shows that unions always vote with their group, and always vote “yes” for every convention. This is not as surprising or one sided as it may seem — if a labour rights convention were unacceptable to the union side, it would be unlikely to go forward to a vote in the first place. Employers, however, do not always vote together, nor do they support every convention. 206
The ILO Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 – Lillie the social partners exercise a great deal of influence. The social partners often treat governments as an audience to be influenced on issues where the social partners cannot find agreement. This is not to say that governments have no substantial influence. They are not only “swing” voters on key issues, but they also greatly influence the real world impact of the convention by ratifying it or not. Their influence, is, however, more passive than that of the social partners, in that the social partners shape the convention according to their preferences within the constraints of what they believe will be acceptable to a critical mass of governments. Within negotiations, discussions are divided into plenary meetings and caucuses. Governments’, unions’ and employers’ groups are all present at plenary meetings chaired by an elected Conference President from the governments’ ranks, or by one of the three vice-presidents from the governments’, employers’ or workers’ ranks. In plenary, group spokespeople are usually the only ones to speak from among the social partners, meaning each social partner group speaks with one voice. Governments, however, generally speak for themselves. Although they have a group rapporteur, this is purely for reporting purposes. Plenary sessions alternate with group meetings, which are closed strategy sessions where each group attempts to arrive at a unitary position. In the MLC caucuses, the unions’ and employers’ groups tended to be dominated by core constituents who were well networked and informed about the issues under discussion. The core groups included the group chairs, representative(s) from the groups’ international associations (ITF and ISF), as well as some of the more interested leaders from national unions or employer associations. However, less central constituents provided input as well, particularly when representing their own national situations. Social partner delegates planned strategies for influencing the positions of specific national governments in the caucuses. Sometimes, this involved mobilizing a particular union or shipowner delegate to advise or pressure their national government representative, in hope of moving the government’s position closer to that of the social partner group in question. The governments’ group meetings, on the other hand, were not as much strategy planning sessions as the social partners’ group meetings, but sometimes resembled an extended plenary. Unlike the views of the unions and employers, government views tended to be too divergent on contentious issues for a unitary strategy to emerge. Between the larger and more formal meetings, much of the actual negotiation (particularly on complex issues) occurred in small specialized 207
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CROSS-BORDER SOCIAL DIALOGUE AND AG
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Published by the International Inst
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Cross-border social dialogue and ag
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Contributors Dominique Bé, an econ
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Contributors Nathan Lillie is Assis
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Acronyms BWI Building and Wood Work
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Introduction Konstantinos Papadakis
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Introduction - Papadakis each with
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Introduction - Papadakis above. Thi
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Introduction - Papadakis tices unde
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Introduction - Papadakis role of co
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Introduction - Papadakis veaux enje
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Chapter 1 International framework a
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International framework agreements:
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Chapter 3 International framework a
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International framework agreements
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Part 3 Legal dimensions 113
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Appendix
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