LABOUR LAWS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21652, 10 December 1935, Page 12

LABOUR LAWS

Conference Next Year At Geneva HOURS OF WORK TO BE CONSIDERED Preparations are now under way for the next general session of the International Labour Conference, which will be held in Geneva in June next, stated Mr E. J. Riches, New Zealand member of the economic department of the International Labour Office at Geneva, in an interview yesterday. The subjects to be discussed will include the regulation of certain special systems of recruiting workers plantation labour, for exampleholidays with pay, the reduction of hours of work on public works, in building and construction, in the iron and steel industry, and in coal mines, and safety provisions for workers in building and construction. Reports on several of these subjects were considered by the last session of the conference and questionnaires have since been sent out to the governments of all the countries members of the International Labour Organisation asking their opinion as to what points should be dealt with in any conventions or recommendations which may be drafted next year. When the replies to these questionnaires have been received the International Labour Office will publish an analysis of them in French and English, together with suggested drafts of conventions and recommendations for discussion at the conference in June next. In the case of subjects' which have not previously been examined in detail by the conference the International Labour Office will prepare reports analysing existing legislation and practice in all countries and the conference will use these as a basis for preparing lists of points on which the Governments will be consulted before the 1937 session of the conference. SECTIONAL LABOUR CONFERENCE NEW INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT A new development in the methods of the International Labour Organisation will take place in the near future, when a regional labour conference will be held in Santiago, Chile. To this conference every state in North, Central, and South America will be invited to send delegations consisting of representatives of Governments, employers, and workers, Mr E. J. Riches, New Zealand member of the economic department of the International Labour Office, told a reporter of "The Press" in an interview yesterday. This regional conference, he said, will differ from the ordinary annual sessions of the International Labour Conference in that it will be attended only by delegates from the various states' of the American continent and not by representatives from all the leading industrial countries of the world. Moreover it will make no attempt to draft international labour conventions, but will confine its activities to examining the position regarding ratification and enforcement of existing conventions in the countries represented and to considering what questions of special interest to those countries might be suggested for discussion at the regular sessions of the International Labour Conference. The conference is being held in Santiago at the special invitation of the Government of Chile, which has undertaken to bear a large part of the expense involved. Like a number of the other Latin American states Chile has in recent years taken a marked interest in the work of the International Labour Office, as is shown by her ratification of 19 international labour conventions.