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International Labour
Standards & Human Rights (Geneva)
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The ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, adopted in 1998, states that all Members of the ILO have an obligation arising from their membership of the Organization to respect, to promote and to realize, in good faith and in accordance with the Constitution, the principles concerning certain fundamental rights, including freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining. The Declaration also recognizes the obligation on the Organization to assist its Members in this matter "by making full use of its constitutional, operational and budgetary resources," and to support them by offering technical cooperation and advisory services to promote the ratification and implementation of the fundamental Conventions, as well as by assisting those Members not yet in a position to ratify some or all of the fundamental Conventions in their efforts to respect, to promote and to realize the principles concerning fundamental rights which are the subject of those Conventions. To give full effect to the Declaration, it was accompanied by a follow-up mechanism aiming at encouraging the efforts made by ILO Members to promote the fundamental principles and rights enshrined in the ILO Constitution, such as freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.
The first follow-up to the Declaration concerned freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining. A global report entitled Your Voice at Work was discussed at the ILO Conference in June 2000. In November 2000, the ILO Governing Body discussed priorities and action plans for technical cooperation in this area.
One clear effect of the initial follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work was an increasing number of requests for technical assistance and training regarding freedom of association and collective bargaining from the Organization's constituents, made to Headquarters or to the Organization's decentralized structures in the field. Unfortunately, the Office's staffing restrictions permit only the most urgent to be dealt with. Others, which might justify action, cannot be met immediately. It therefore seemed appropriate for Headquarters to set up a network of experts that would be able to take preliminary measures and effective action on the spot concerning freedom of association whenever the situation seemed to call for such action. These experts would act on behalf of the Office. They could also back up the Office's technical assistance. Their intervention might concern the monitoring of legislative projects, help and support needed by the social partners and training in freedom of association and in ILO supervisory organs.
The aim of this training is to enable Headquarters and the Organization's decentralized structures to respond better to the needs and requests of the ILO's constituents regarding freedom of association. To this end, the training seeks to establish a group of experts able to produce a "rapid response" whenever this is required. This rapid preliminary response task force will make it possible to increase the number of interventions the Office makes regarding freedom of association and to enhance the quality of Headquarters' technical assistance with support either before or after such assistance. These experts should also provide technical back-up for the specialists on standards within the multi-disciplinary teams.
The course to train experts to make a "rapid response" should contribute toward a greater respecting of the principles of freedom of association by the Members of the Organization, whether or not they have ratified the core Conventions on freedom of association.
The training's specific objectives are to:
give the experts a better understanding of how the Organization works, particularly as regards standards-related activities and monitoring machinery;
make an in-depth examination of rights and principles of freedom of association through a detailed reading of the relevant Conventions, especially Conventions Nos.87 and 98;
make the experts more fully aware of what is expected of them.
After training, the experts should be in a position to take timely action on behalf of the Office, at its request, in the field of freedom of association.
The experts' training is comprised of three parts. The first one includes a two-week residential training. This training activity will be accompanied by distance training and by the experts' participation as trainers in activities of the Centre's International Labour Standards and Human Rights Programme or in technical activities of the ILO Freedom of Association Branch.
The residential training activity is divided in three blocks.
The first is designed to present the International Labour Organization. Its tripartite nature will be highlighted, together with the impact which this may have on the experts' work. The Organization's standards-related activity and the procedure by which international labour standards are decided upon, drawn up, discussed and adopted is then presented. The experts will have to do various exercises on the subject, and to understand what might be required of them at this stage. The supervisory machinery, based on reports submitted by ILO constituents, will be detailed, together with more contentious procedures. Because of its importance, specific sessions will be devoted to the Freedom of Association Committee's own procedure.
The second block, to start in the first days of the second week, is on the rights and principles of freedom of association. These will be presented through a detailed reading of the main Conventions that deal with freedom of association, namely Conventions Nos. 87 and 98. The cross-cutting issues that the experts will necessarily have to come to grips with in their activity, such as the notion of workers in international law, non-national workers and freedom of association, dispute settlement machinery, including the right to strike, individualization of the work relationship, complex questions regarding representativeness and independence, and the civil service and freedom of association, will be examined in depth.
The third and last block will require very active participation by the experts, since they will be put into an intervention situation and called upon to describe the measures they would advocate to improve the situation in terms of respect for the fundamental principles of freedom of association.
The distance training aims to examine more thoroughly a number of topics covered in the residential training. In this regard, it is planned to create a virtual space where participants can interact freely in English and do the exercises given to them during the residential training in their own working language (English, French or Spanish).
The experts' involvement in the Centre's training activities or as support for the ILO Freedom of Association Branch aims at strengthening their links with the ILO officials responsible for freedom of association issues and at making them more familiar with the training materials and methods privileged by the ILO.
The experts should be high-level people whose personal qualities and independence make them likely to win the trust of the Organization's three groups. They should also be ready and able to intervene upon request.
The training is designed for a highly participatory approach by the experts in training, who will be called upon to contribute at every stage in the training process, thereby creating an environment likely to generate significant ideas and thought and to contribute to the sharing of relevant information.
The languages used will be English, French and Spanish.
The residential training will take place from 3 to 14 September 2001 - in Turin and Geneva.
The distance training should be held during the months of September to December 2001.
Finally, the experts' participation as trainers in activities of the Centre's International Labour Standards and Human Rights Programme or as support to technical activities in the ILO Freedom of Association Branch's activities, means a 2-3 days experts' involvement between September and December 2001.
