Ms. Dorine Monica Brooks, Director, International Labour Agencies and Information, ILO Desk Officer, Ministry of Labour and Social Security, Jamaica describes how exclusive responsibility can help responsiveness.

“Jamaica is one of the few Caribbean islands that has created an office in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and that has an officer that deals exclusively with ILS matters. This has helped to facilitate greater ease in locating documents sent to the Ministry by the ILO, because what happened is that whatever comes in sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but it is then sent directly to the ILO Office at the Ministry of Labour. This is a guarantee of greater promptness in producing responses and replies to most requests, e.g. questionnaires, report forms, unratified conventions, etc.”

Ms. Celeste M. Valderrama, Director, International Labor Affairs Bureau, Department of Labor and Employment, Philippines, describes the organization of the authority responsible for ILS and ILS reporting (December, 2011).

Overview of operations – Responsible manager

“I am Maria Celeste Valderrama and I head the International Labor Affairs Bureau which handles the International Labour Organization’s concerns like compliance to the international labour standards, as well as of course our reportorial obligations under the ILO constitution. The International labor affairs bureau under the Department of Labor and Employment has four major functions. One is ensuring our commitment under the ILO, second is maintaining our technical cooperation program with multilateral, bilateral and other international organizations and the third is supervising a group of labor attachés posted in about 38 posts abroad. Our labor posts actually provide services to the Filipino workers who are overseas, numbering… it’s about, it’s estimated at about 8 millions. We also have a group which handles the resource requirements of these posts, which is still a fairly large responsibility on our part. To do our work in ensuring that we are able to comply with the reportorial obligations of the ILS, we coordinate quiet extensively with our frontline officers with other bureaus handling the major programs of the department. ILAB has a personnel complement of 24 people and five of them take charge of the international labour standards monitoring. About seven of the remaining 19 people take charge of Middle East affairs, about seven handle Asia and the Pacific affairs and then we have another group handling Europe and America. So three operational units plus one group handling multilateral cooperation. They are the ones handling the ILS and the ILO concerns… All of the ILO concerns.”

Special thanks go 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.

Ms. Delia S. Palomar, Chief Labor and Employment Officer, International Relations and Cooperation Division, Department of Labor and Employment, Philippines, describes how submission to the competent national authorities of newly adopted ILS is effectuated (December, 2011).

Arrangements for submission to the competent national authorities

“First submission to the competent authorities. As soon as we receive the document from the ILO requesting to the transmitted to National competent authorities we draft the memo or the letter to the Office of the Senate president and the Speaker of the House citing the importance of the convention and referring it to them for future legislation. So upon transmitting the text of the convention or the recommendation, we solicit the acknowledgement or whatever decisions the Senate or Congress will take into account for the said conventions. Like right now we just received the acknowledgement receipt from the House of Representatives acknowledging that they have received the text of the domestic work convention. In the case of the Domestic work Convention, we are in close coordination with the national competent authorities because we also consulted them for its certification and we indicated in our transmittal letter that the same is being referred to them because there is an action to ratify the convention. But in most cases we just notify them that there is a new convention or a new international instrument that should be taken into account in future legislation. In submitting the instrument to competent authorities, we indicate that it is in compliance with our obligation as a member State of the ILO and such instrument could be considered in their drafting of bills.”

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.

Ms. Celeste M. Valderrama, Director, International Labor Affairs Bureau, Department of Labor and Employment, Philippines, describes how legal expertise is accessed on an “as-needed” basis (December, 2011).

How is legal expertise brought into use?

“In previous years in the history of the ILAB, the office used to be ILAD, there were lawyers who were part of the personnel handling the division, the division handling the ILS. But they have left, they are gone now and we cannot anymore hire lawyers. So what do we do? With the limited resources, with the limited personnel that we have, we engage lawyers from all the other bureaus and so they provide a substantial… the substance to the report. We have lawyers from the Bureau of Labor relations, from the Bureau of Working Conditions, from the PRC for instance and the POEA. They are the ones handling the substantive reporting. I cannot really say do I need a lawyer, but a lawyer would be good, a lawyer would be helpful to do this ILS work here in this division, but if there is none, then we can accept the services of lawyers within the Department also, who provide the input to the report that we submit. I think the very controversial part of the report pertains to freedom of association and collective bargaining, I think for those areas we need a lawyer and then for that the Bureau of Labor relations provide that kind of  inputs.”

Special thanks go 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.