At the annual General Assembly of the International Labor Organization, main item on the agenda was revision of its 1952 convention (an agreement) on maternity protection.

In a world in the throes of globalization, the new document plays a prominent role.

The revised standards would apply to all women, "including those in atypical forms of dependent work." They provide specifically for the protection of the health of both the mother and the child. They extend the right to maternity leave from 12 weeks (set in the 1919 convention) to 14, including "a period of six weeks compulsory leave after child birth," and provides for "cash benefits" to women on leave. (Croatia provides for 28 weeks of paid leave, and many other countries go well beyond the 14.)

The provision on employment protection forbids dismissing a woman during her pregnancy or leave except for grounds unrelated to childbirth.

And breastfeeding is protected by a provision permitting "one or more daily breaks or a reduction of hours of work to breastfeed and these breaks or the reduction of daily hours of work shall be counted as working time and remunerated accordingly."

When the International Labor Organization was founded in 1919, it produced a labor standards convention that dealt with maternity protection. An exceptionally bold document for its time, it was ratified by fewer than 40 nations, and the 1952 update fared little better.

Indeed, only 38 countries have ratified one or the other of the two earlier sets of standards. This provided opponents in Geneva with an argument heard repeatedly: Stricter standards would be ignored by the majority of the governments of the world, and without ratification the standards are pointless.

The call instead was for a set of flexible general principles to be used as guidelines for lawmakers in drafting national legislation, and the peculiar structure of the International Labor Organization lent force to such a call.

Unlike other major international organizations like the World Health Organization or the United Nations itself, the organization comprises more than governments as members. National workers' and employers' associations are both included in membership. Not surprisingly, employers fought the revision.

But the proponents of stronger standards kept insisting that ratification is not necessarily the final goal.

Maternity protection advocates from all over the world were quick to point out that the two earlier conventions have been constantly cited as the ultimate reference for judging a country's efforts — or lack of them — to protect its working mothers.

In other words, even if most countries don't ratify the new document, it will serve as a touchstone for people all over the world in determining what could and should be done.

This has been the case in the United States, which has ratified only 12 of the 183 International Labor Organization conventions on labor standards. (Such a record has not prevented U.S. labor advocates from constantly referring to ILO standards in assessing their own situation.)

The argument for stricter international standards is even greater when one considers the present — and what will likely be the future — context.

More and more women worldwide are spending their childbearing years in paid employment, and this alone justifies increased attention to the question. Furthermore, the document is likely to be the last such for a long time to come.

But the strongest argument in favor of stricter standards is the general decline in working conditions throughout the world — especially conditions for women — as globalization has made it possible for transnational corporations to move their operations easily from one country to another and has vastly increased their power.

International guidelines, one of the big buzzwords at international gatherings where corporate behavior is discussed for whatever reason, have an interesting history and precedent.

In 1981, the World Health Organization voted a set of guidelines in the form of a code for the marketing of infant formula. At the time, it was estimated that some 10 million infants each year were dying from the abuse of such products. The code has since been strengthened by eight additional articles. Ideally, member states (all the countries of the world) are pledged to implement the code through national legislation.

The International Baby Food Action Network, a network of not-for-profit non-governmental organizations present in almost a hundred countries, has been monitoring compliance with the code since the beginning, and it says that serious abuses are still rampant.

According to the WHO and the U.N. Children's Fund, some 4,000 infants are still dying every day from misuse of infant formula, and the industry is not relenting, even in places where formula is totally unsuitable.

But most alarming have been the efforts of manufacturers of infant formula to meddle with national provisions on a country-by-country basis.

Thus, in Gabon, for example, the code was incorporated into the health ministry's directives, but Nestle, the biggest food-processing company in the world, which dominates the infant formula market, has refused to abide by them, claiming that as long as the code's provisions are not national law they are merely optional suggestions.

In Zimbabwe, when the government first proposed incorporating the code into national law, Nestle threatened to pull all its investment out of the country if the law went through. (In the end, after a considerable wrangle, the law did go through, and Nestle stayed on.)

It was to avoid this sort of thing that advocates of strong international standards wanted to make clear ground rules, and after an exhausting battle, they got most of what they were out for. Where the convention is ratified, it will become law. Elsewhere, it can be cited as internationally recommended law, not just optional suggestions.

While many people in the United States, a country which has refused even the right to unpaid family leave, may find the convention utopian, it is indicative of which way the wind is blowing in the rest of the world. And as globalization continues, working conditions — especially those of women — will be more and more heatedly debated. Advocates for the rights of working mothers will find in the new convention a powerful tool and rallying point, whether the United States ever ratifies it or not.

Examiner contributor Robert James Parsons, based in Switzerland, writes on international issues for the Geneva daily Le Courrier.

Copyright 2000 San Francisco Examiner

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