Setting the agenda for global employment law

It’s been an honour to be in Geneva at ILC2024 representing UK employers with the support of Doyle Clayton , and to fly the flag for ELLINT: Employment & Labor Lawyers International.

Since 2016, I have had the privilege of being a member of the UK delegation to the International Labour Conference of the International Labour Organisation, the United Nations agency which sets binding standards and monitors compliance with them.

The annual 2-week conference in Geneva is where these matters are hammered out by negotiation between governments, employers’ organisations and workers’ organisations. It is this tripartite structure that makes the ILO unique and is its lifeblood.

In 2019, I was part of the team the negotiating the most recent ILO convention, the Violence and Harassment Convention. At this year’s conference, negotiations have been taking place regarding the content and form of a proposed new labour standard concerning biological hazards in the working environment.

The current proposal regarding employers is that they should “ensure that, so far as is reasonably practicable, the working environments under their control are without risk to safety and health due to exposure to biological hazards by taking the appropriate and necessary preventive and protective measures”. The final form of any new labour standard will be agreed at next year’s conference.

I have also again been participating in the Committee on the Application of Standards, which considers complaints that member states are acting in breach of binding labour standards. The crucial context this year is that it is the first International Labour Conference since the Governing Body of the ILO, at the request of the International Trade Union Convention, requested a ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague on whether ILO Convention 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention does, or does not, include the right to strike. A hearing on this is likely to take place in the second quarter of 2025 in the Hague.

Carrying out this important role gives unique insight into global horizons that can be expected to affect UK employers, as new international law is often translated into changes in domestic legislation. With it looking very likely that there will be a change in UK government next month, this is particularly salient because the approach to ILO labour standards is one area where a UK Labour government could seek a degree of alignment with other major European countries without having to take any policy position on UK-EU relations.