Meeting of Experts to Develop Guidelines for Labour Inspection in Forestry

Geneva, 24-28 January 2005

Participation

The Meeting was composed of 15 experts: five nominated by governments of ILO member States chosen by the Governing Body of the ILO; five nominated by the Governing Body after consultations with the Employers' group; and five nominated by the Governing Body after consultation with the Workers' group. Observers from a number of intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations also attended.

Purpose of the Meeting

The purpose of the meeting was to consider and review a draft and adopt guidelines for labour inspection in forestry.

The recommendations of the draft before the meeting were intended to assist the participants in their mission as set forth by the Governing Body - i.e. to translate the principles of decent work into practice by adopting guidelines to assist inspectors and others to implement appropriate practices in forestry management.

Guidelines for Labour Inspection in Forestry

These Guidelines raise some of the main issues and general principles of labour standards and their inspection in the forestry sector. They are aimed at three main users: (a) labour inspectors/certifiers (state labour inspectors and sustainable forest certifiers, who are evaluating compliance with labour standards in forestry organizations as well as others such as internal auditors); (b) forest managers (individuals and management teams responsible for running forest enterprises and implementing labour standards in their organizations, including employers, senior managers, employees, contractors, self-employed people and forest owners); and (c) training and educational organizations responsible for training both forest management staff and inspectors.

The Guidelines are based on the ILO Conventions and Recommendations and make use of the existing interpretations of these, in particular the ILO Code of practice on safety and health in forestry work, Social criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management, and Approaches to labour inspection in forestry.

The publication first presents a background to the forest sector, followed by a general introduction to implementing labour standards in forest management. Next, it focuses on implementing the ILO instruments. The modular format of the text enables forest managers to implement them and inspectors to evaluate this implementation. The final chapter includes a general guideline to organizing labour inspections and assessing compliance. The annexes provide separate checklists for forest management and labour inspectors on issues to cover in implementing and evaluating labour standards, bringing together the guidelines presented in section 3.

It is planned that the Guidelines will be widely disseminated by the ILO, and social dialogue activities encouraged and facilitated to put them into practice around the world. The text of the Guidelines as adopted by the meeting as well as a set of recommendations for ILO follow-up action are available online (pdf, 272k; pdf, 12k).

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