The ILO Standards with Regard to Developing Countries in the Late 1980s and in Particular Relation to the Circumstances
Developing countries constitute more than two-thirds of the members of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The main task of the ILO is to set international labour standards. With regard to developing countries, it is important for compliance with
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Introduction
Developing countries constitute more than two-thirds of the members of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The main task of the ILO is to set international labour standards. With regard to developing countries, it is important for compliance with international labour standards to be integrated into free trade systems in order to form the basis for fair competition (Valticos 1982) However, ILO standards do not always correspond to the circumstances of developing countries. One of the reasons for this is attributed to the ILO’s history. It was founded in 1919 as part of the Versailles Treaty by the 43 participating countries, most of which were developed countries. By 1987, the ILO had adopted 162 Conventions and 172 Recommendations. Most developing countries joined the ILO after gaining independence. Thus, developing countries did not participate fully from the beginning in the standard-setting activities of the ILO. Occasionally, the representatives of developing countries insisted that they could not participate in the standard-setting process because of their financial problems, their particular circumstances
© The Author(s) 2017 N. Kuriyama, Japanese Human Resource Management, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43053-9_11
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regarding human resources and labour administration, and the logistics of dealing with ILO matters (ILO 1977). Developing countries also requested the introduction of various flexible arrangements into the ILO standards at the application and implementation stages because they considered that the standards were too rigid to be applied in a practical way. However, it is very difficult to determine how the law and standards should be made stricter or more flexible. The representatives of the developing countries expressed their concerns regarding the ILO standards at various meetings in the 1980s. In Asia, the difficulty of applying the ILO standards was expressed by many government representatives. In 1977, the Asian advisory committee of the ILO (1977) encouraged the promotion of the ratification of the ILO standards. In response, the ninth Asian Regional Conference of the ILO in 1980 contained many requests for more flexible measures and for these to reflect the circumstances of developing countries (ILO 1980a). The Director-General of the ILO was forced to respond to the discussions on this topic (ILO 1980b). The Labour Ministers issued a communiqué asking for the ILO standards to reflect reality at the meetings in Kuala Lumpur in 1980, in Singapore in 1982, in Manila in 1984, and in Brunei Darussalam in 1986. In 1984, the 70th ILO Conference in Geneva provided the most significant discussion points on the issue of ILO standards and developing countries. The statements of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries could be seen as typical of the views of developing countries. As an example, the government delegate of Indonesia expressed the idea that the ILO standards were not necessarily applicable to developing countries.
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