An example of the consultation process

Ms. Delia S. Palomar, Chief Labor and Employment Officer, International Relations and Cooperation Division, Department of Labor and Employment, Philippines, describes the consultation process followed in the Philippines (December, 2011).

The flow of consultation with government and with the social partners

“So for the past six years we have been doing quite well in our reporting obligations due to the fact that we subjected our reports to tripartite consultation, aside from the government consultation that we have upon the first draft. So after we do our first draft and consulted government organizations, we submit our report to the technical Executive committee of the tripartite industrial peace council for their inputs and their comments and as soon as we get their comments, we consolidate all of them into a draft Philippines report which is submitted to the ILO.

For ILS reporting, we… the consultation process takes upon receiving the request from the ILO,  we coordinate with the concerned agencies, we write them a letter requesting for their inputs on the reports being requested by the ILO. As soon as we receive their inputs, we prepare them and transmit them, transmit to them (the agencies) through email for validation, after which we call them for a meeting, a consultation meeting to validate their responses. And also if other agencies have inputs to contribute on those reports.

In cases where we don’t have the answers we need, we try to research and we draft the replies and send it to the concerned officers for validation if we… huh if that is the correct reply and if they have more inputs to add. But sometimes that is one of the challenges that we are having in preparing the reports due to the various loads of other officers but as much as possible we try to submit to them the report for their proper answer.”

Special thanks got to the Honorable Secretary of Labor and Employment of the Philippines, and the Director and staff of the International Labor Affairs Bureau of the Department of Labor of the Philippines for their generous cooperation in the production of this video.