Employers' Handbook on ILO Standards-related Activities

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EMPLOYERS’ HANDBOOK ON ILO STANDARDS-RELATED ACTIVITIES
Committee’s discussions and conclusions and gives a topical overview of the application
of ILS and problems encountered in this regard. The report also includes
“special paragraphs”, which (usually) name countries persistently ignoring their
ILS-related obligations. In this case, public pressure will be generated or increased
to correct the situation.
The employer members of the Applications Committee have equal voting
rights with the government and worker members. They can call the attention of the
Committee to any matters which they believe should be considered. The active
engagement of employer members is essential not least because the evaluation of
cases brought before the Committee often has far-reaching consequences for the
understanding and interpretation of ILS.
Although employer members of the Applications Committee have mostly concurred
with the findings of the Committee of Experts and based their conclusions on
them, there have been cases of disagreement. One example is the interpretation of
Convention No. 87 by the Committee of Experts regarding the “right to strike” (see
“Interpretation of Conventions and Recommendations” below).
This disparity between the interpretations of the two Committees led to a discussion
about the mandates of these two regular supervisory organs and the relationship
between them. The Committee of Experts initially held the view that “in so far as its
views are not contradicted by the International Court of Justice, they are to be considered
as valid and generally recognised” (para. 7, Report of the Committee of Experts,
ILC, 1990). The employer members of the Applications Committee, supported by several
governments, opposed this statement as it was, in their view, not in keeping with
the technical and supportive function of the Committee of Experts. When the Committee
of Experts was set up by the ILC in 1926, there was agreement that it “would have
no judicial capacity, nor would it be competent to give interpretations of the provisions
of the Conventions nor to decide in favour of one interpretation rather than another”
(see ILC, 8th session, final record, Appendix V, p. 405). This distribution of roles between
the Committee of Experts and the Applications Committee was reaffirmed by
the ILO GB in 1947 (“It has been recognised from the outset that the technical examination
of the annual reports carried out by the Experts is an indispensable preliminary
to the over-all survey of application conducted by the Conference through its Committee
on the Application of Conventions”, Minutes of the 103rd session of the GB, December
1947, p. 173) and by the Committee of Experts itself (“The Committee’s basic
purposes and principles have, however, remained essentially the same …”, Report of
the Committee of Experts, ILC, 63rd Session 1977, para. 29). Furthermore, the employers
pointed out that according to Art. 7 of the Standing Orders of the International
Labour Conference, the evaluation function of the Applications Committee was unrestricted.
Therefore, the views of the Committee of Experts could not take precedence
over diverging views held by the Applications Committee.
On this intervention, the Committee of Experts in its subsequent report conceded
that the employer members of the Applications Committee had “the right to depart” from
the Committee of Experts’ views (para. 12, Report of the Committee of Experts, ILC,
1991). The employers concluded that if they had this right then the other members of the
Committee and thus the Committee as a whole necessarily must have the same right, too.