DIEU LEAGUE OF NATIONS International Labour Conference SIXTH SESSION, GENEVA, JUNE-JULY, 1924 Report of British Government Delegates to the Minister of Labour Presented to Parliament by LONDON: PRINTED & PUBLISHED BY HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE. To be purchased directly from H. M. STATIONERY OFFICE at the following addresses: Adastral House, Kingsway, London, W.C.2; 28, Abingdon Street, London, S.W.1; York Street, Manchester; 1, St. Andrew's Crescent, Cardiff; or 120, George Street, Edinburgh; or through any Bookseller. INTERNATIONAL LABOUR CONFERENCE SIXTH SESSION, GENEVA, JUNE-JULY, 1924 REPORT BY THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT DELEGATES To the Rt. Hon. Sir ARTHUR STEEL-MAITLAND, Bt., M.P., SIR, Montagu House, Whitehall, S.W.1. WE have the honour to present the following report on the sixth session of the International Labour Conference. 1. The first sitting of the Conference was held on the morning of Monday, the 16th June, and the last on the evening of Saturday, 5th July. In all, twenty-four plenary sittings of the Conference were held, in addition to some ninety sittings of Committees appointed by the Conference. 2. Article 389 of the Treaty of Versailles requires that each Conference shall be composed of four representatives of each of the members of the Organisation, of whom two shall be Government delegates, while the other two shall be delegates representing respectively the employers and workpeople. Each delegate may be accompanied by advisers who may not exceed two in number for each item on the agenda of the meeting. 3. Of the fifty-seven members of the Organisation, forty countries were represented at the Conference by sixty-nine Government delegates, thirty employers' delegates and twentyeight workers' delegates. The Government delegates had fiftynine advisers, the employers' forty-six advisers and five substitute advisers, while the workers' had fifty-four advisers. The total number of persons officially representing the forty countries was, therefore, 291. The total number of incomplete delegations was sixteen, including four which were so classified because they had only one Government delegate. 4. The British Government delegates to the Conference were— Miss Margaret Bondfield, J.P.-at the time M.P. and Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour; and Mr. Rhys John Davies, M.P., at the time Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs. Owing to the pressure of her Parliamentary duties, Miss Bondfield had to return to London at the end of the first day of the Conference and her place was taken for the remainder of the Conference by Mr. Humbert Wolfe, C.B.E., Principal Assistant Secretary, Ministry of Labour, who was appointed her deputy. For a few days in the course of the Conference it was necessary for Mr. Rhys Davies to return to London owing to his Parliamentary duties, and Mr. R. R. Bannatyne, C.B., Assistant Secretary, Home Office, acted as his deputy. A list of the members of the British delegation is given in Appendix A attached. AGENDA OF THE CONFERENCE. 5. The four items formally placed upon the agenda by the Governing Body were as follows: I. Development of facilities for the utilisation of workers' spare time; II. Equality of treatment for national and foreign workers as regards workmen's compensation for accidents; III. Weekly suspension of work for twenty-four hours in glass manufacturing processes where tank furnaces are used; IV. Night work in bakeries. In addition to these items, the Conference had to consider V. The report of the Advisory Committee on anthrax; VI. The report of the Director of the International Labour Office to the Conference; VII. A report by the Director on an inquiry into unemployment; VIII. A report by the Director on the institution of a procedure for the amendment of conventions. Finally, various resolutions presented by delegates were subinitted to the Conference. The texts of these resolutions in the in which they were presented to the Conference after consideration by the Selection Committee, are given in Appendices B to E. PROCEDURE. 6. Miss Bondfield proposed that Mr. Hjalmar Branting (Swedish Government delegate) should be elected President of the Conference, and the proposal was adopted unanimously. As Vice-Presidents of the Conference there were elected : Government Group.-His Excellency Dr. Aristides de Agüero y Bethancourt (Cuba). 7. It was agreed to appoint Committees as follows: : (a) Facilities for the utilisation of workers' spare time thirty-six members; (b) Night work in bakeries-thirty-six members; (c) Weekly suspension of work for twenty-four hours in glass manufacturing processes where tank furnaces are used-thirty-six members; (d) Equality of treatment for national and foreign workers as regards workmen's compensation for accidentsthirty-six members; (e) Unemployment-thirty members; (f) Anthrax-thirty members. These numbers were in each case divided equally between the Government, employers' and workers' representatives. The Selection Committee decided to deal itself, in the first place, with the political aspect of the problem of a procedure for the amendment of Conventions and afterwards appointed a Jurists' sub-committee of nine members to deal with the question in greater detail. 8. Early reference should be made to what was perhaps the most noteworthy achievement of the sixth session of the Conference. In the past considerable difficulty has been experienced in ratifying draft Conventions adopted by the International Labour Conference, not, as a rule, because of any disagreement with the main principles underlying the drafts, but because the solemn undertaking to be bound for ten years which is implied by ratification could not lightly be assumed when, as was sometimes the case, the draft Convention differed on some subordinate point from the practice which it would be possible to adopt. Draft Conventions have often in the past failed to combine the necessary elasticity in some directions with the equally necessary tightness in others. 9. As a method of avoiding this difficulty in future, it had been suggested that in future a "two-reading" procedure should be adopted, i.e., a provisional vote only should be taken in the course of the session at which the discussion first took place, the final vote being taken at the session of the Conference held a year later. This would allow the States practically a year in which to consider the texts in the light of their own law and practice and give them an opportunity, before a draft Convention was finally adopted, of suggesting amendments which, if accepted by the Conference, would facilitate ratification. 10. The sixth session of the Conference will be notable as the first session at which this new procedure was adopted, and a considerable part of the time and energies of the Jurists' subcommittee (on which Mr. Oswald Allen, C.B.E., represented the British Government), to which reference has been made. above, was spent in considering how exactly effect could best be given to the new proposal. 11. In the result, a provisional amendment to the Standing Orders of the Conference was adopted. The effect of the amendment is to make the adoption of the new procedure dependent on a decision of the Conference in the case of each draft Convention or recommendation. The text is to be considered by the Governing Body of the International Labour Office during the coming year and will be settled by the seventh session of the Conference in 1925. FACILITIES FOR THE UTILISATION OF WORKERS' SPARE TIME. on 12. On the Committee which dealt with the utilisation of workers' spare time, Mr. Humbert Wolfe represented the British Government, with Mr. Oswald Allen as his substitute. The British employers' representative was Mr. Milne Watson (substitute Mr. Lloyd Roberts) and the British workers' representative Miss Julia Varley (substitute Mr. Ben. Turner). Mr. Sokal (Polish Government) was elected Chairman and, the proposal of the British representative, Mrs. Kjelsberg (Norwegian Government) was appointed reporter. Mr. Pauwels (Belgian worker) ultimately acted as a second reporter. Committee held ten sittings and presented to the Conference an extremely lengthy recommendation and resolution which were adopted without amendment. The full text of the recommendation as finally adopted by the Conference will be found in Cmd. 2292 (24). The 13. Mr. Wolfe explained at the seventeenth sitting of the Conference that, though he had abstained from taking part in any of the decisive votes in committee, this abstention was not to be interpreted as showing a hostile or indifferent attitude on part of the British Government. The profound interest of the His Majesty's Government in every question affecting the welfare of the workers was not open to doubt, but the Government wished to see resulting from the deliberations of the International Labour Conference, not merely resolutions or aspirations, but deeds. It was because the recommendation seemed rather a general statement of self-evident principles that the Government had suggested that the Conference should consider the more limited question of adult education. That suggestion had not been accepted and was not pressed. In all the circumstances, the British Government delegates would vote for the recommendation as a whole, but desired to emphasise the hope that in future recommendations of the Conference would be more practical in their intention and more limited in scope. They would then be more likely to produce in practice those beneficial results to all industrial communities which His Majesty's Government were the first in desiring. EQUALITY OF TREATMENT FOR NATIONAL AND FOREIGN WORKERS AS REGARDS WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION FOR ACCIDENTS. 14. The British Government representative on the Committee which dealt with this subject was Mr. Bannatyne, whose place (owing to his absence on the night-baking Committee) was on 51477 A 2 |