Nearly 1.2 million seafarers work for the world's shipping industry. The forthcoming Maritime Session of the International Labour Conference will meet on 7-23 February to consider a new labour standard consolidating and updating more than 65 international labour standards adopted over the last 80 years.
The draft Convention sets out seafarers' rights to decent conditions of work, on a wide range of subjects and is intended to be globally applicable, easily understandable, readily updatable and uniformly enforced. It has been designed to become a global instrument known as the "fourth pillar" of the international regulatory regime for quality shipping, complementing the key Conventions of the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
The decision by the ILO to move toward a major new maritime labour Convention was the result of a joint resolution in 2001 by the international seafarers' and shipowners' organizations, later supported by governments. They pointed out that the shipping industry is "the world's first genuinely global industry" which "requires an international regulatory response of an appropriate kind - global standards applicable to the entire industry".