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GB.273/13
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THIRTEENTH ITEM ON THE AGENDA
International Institute for Labour Studies
Report of the 40th Session of the Board
1. The Board of the International Institute for Labour Studies held its 40th Session on 13 November 1998. It was chaired by Ms. Hagen, Deputy Director-General of the ILO, on behalf of the Director-General, who had been invited by the Government of France to a major ceremony in Lille in honour of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
2. The Board had before it the report of the Director(1) and a paper concerning the acceptance of contributions and gifts in support of the Institute's activities.(2)
Report of the Director
3. The Director of the Institute (Mr. Gopinath) stated that the report was both descriptive and analytical. The year 1998 marked the beginning of a new phase in the Institute's work, and it seemed useful to set the year's activities in perspective.
4. The relationship between labour institutions, economic growth and social equity was the central theme of the Institute's work. The way in which the Institute's programmes addressed this theme over the years depended on the ILO's current concerns. Thus the early 1990s was the period of the "Washington consensus", when the important ILO questions were the social implications of globalization and the appropriate roles of the State and of the market. Consequently, during that period the Institute had focused on two areas: first, the changing nature of the international organization of production and the labour market implications of lean production and of regional economic interdependence; the second was social exclusion, which resulted in a major contribution by the Institute to the World Summit for Social Development.
5. In the late 1990s public concerns began to change. There was growing awareness that globalization was not proceeding as smoothly as had been imagined in the early years of the decade. There was a loss of confidence in the policy measures formulated in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s, and elements of what is now known as the "post-Washington consensus" began to attract attention. The focus had shifted from the issue of the State versus markets, to the notion of synergies and partnerships between States, markets and societies. Social institutions began to be viewed not merely in prescriptive terms, but also as important instruments to facilitate adjustment and promote stable growth.
6. The shift in the public debate, which began in the late 1990s, had led the Institute to focus on social institutions themselves, and particularly on how ILO constituents were relating to society, and not merely to each other in traditional ways. Interactions between labour and business and the State were becoming much more complex, taking place at many levels, and often mediating through society rather than directly. There was a need to capture the complexity of these interactions and to place tripartism in a contemporary perspective of social change and globalization. That was the rationale behind the two new programmes launched in 1998 on "Business and Society" and "Labour and Society", and the preliminary activities on the "State and Society". The aim was to examine how globalization and social change were affecting the constituents themselves. The Institute sought to acquire direct knowledge of constituents' problems at the national and regional levels, and not as global abstractions, in an attempt to understand their problems downstream, in their own countries and in their own regions.
7. The ultimate aim of these programmes was to increase public awareness of the importance of the contribution of the social partners to ensuring adjustment to globalization with social coherence and economic growth. The recent emerging market crisis was yet another episode in a long process which had begun with the African debt crisis after the second oil shock, and which had been followed by the Latin American crisis and by the Central and Eastern European transitional crisis of the late 1980s. If the ILO was to help member States in this secular process of adjustment, it was essential to promote social dialogue by strengthening its constituents. That, in turn, demanded a better understanding of institutional dynamics.
8. Preliminary work had also begun on the changing role of the State, in particular with respect to employment policy, social security, industrial relations and human resource development. These were all areas in which the role of the State had been changing over the last decade. While people did not want big government, they certainly seemed to want more effective government. If this was the debate of the future, it was important to know what a more effective State meant in the areas of social policy.
9. These three new programmes would extend over at least two or three biennia. The year 1998 was the year in which their foundations were being laid. In doing so, four major requirements were kept in mind: the need to evolve new research methodologies; aiming at new levels of programme integration with ILO departments and with practitioners; addressing regional diversity; and building partnerships with external institutions.
10. With respect to new technologies and research methodologies, the Director drew attention to the relevant sections of the report. Paragraphs 49 to 52 made reference to the experience gained by the Institute in running the ILO's first virtual conference on information and communications technology, jobs and work, in collaboration with the Enterprise Department.
11. The Institute has established a website on the Internet (paragraph 66), which provided details of the Institute and on-line access to all the Institute's free publications, discussion papers and public lectures, as well as on-line catalogue and ordering services.
12. The programme on labour and society has been set up as an experimental electronic network (paragraph 11). The aim was to link research with academic dialogue and practitioner participation, through electronic media. The labour and society programme site on the Internet had been turned into a virtual forum to generate feedback on programmes and strategies of trade unions in different regions. The electronic network had been supplemented by written communications to trade unions which might not have access to the Internet. Responses were being posted back onto the Internet to stimulate exchanges of opinion. A consolidated report would be available for discussion in December. The potential advantages of such a network were considerable: it was a very cost-effective way of reaching out to different regions of the world. At present the network linked some 500 practitioners and 100 academics in a dynamic and interactive way. It provided an archive reference centre attractive to academics because they found it a useful platform to bring their research findings to the attention of practitioners, which would be impossible by any other means. It helped the Institute to identify potential partners beyond the traditional circles to which it had access. Some 125 responses had been received in the three months since the network was set up. While it was too early to assess the experiment, it was evident that the potential was considerable, and that managing the electronic network was highly labour-intensive.
13. The electronic forum was supplemented by a second activity: the preparation of case-studies to examine the situation of trade unions in selected countries, and union strategies in a variety of regional contexts. Sixteen studies had been organized, and the results would be available in the course of 1999 and would serve as source material for a series of regional meetings planned for subsequent biennia. The interaction between the two constituted the new research methodology. This was a classical example of the sort of function appropriate to the Institute: to test new approaches that could be followed by the ILO in future.
14. The second goal was a qualitatively new level of integration with ILO departments (particularly ACTRAV, ACT/EMP and ENTREPRISE) and working relationships with practitioners, trade unions and business organizations. The Institute's programmes were linked wherever possible to making a direct contribution to planned ILO programme outputs. For example, the work on business and society was geared both to the forthcoming second ILO Enterprise Forum and the planned high-level meeting on the future of employers' organizations scheduled for April 1999. Similarly, the output on labour and society was expected to generate a substantial dimension for the work of the Bureau for Workers' Activities, and would be relevant to the ICFTU World Congress in the year 2000. Programme design had also been undertaken in close consultation with practitioners (paragraph 8 of the report).
15. Thirdly, the regional dimension had been built into the labour and society programme design in both Track I and Track II (paragraphs 7, 10 and 13). In Track I, the network attempted to identify regional concerns; the case-studies in Track II were selected to provide a regional balance. In the programme on business and society, a series of regional workshops was envisaged to examine the role of employers' organizations in industrial and social upgrading. The intersectoral and educational programme also emphasized the regional dimension. The ILO Social Policy Lecture, financed by the ILO Nobel Peace Prize, had been held in Kuala Lumpur at the outset of the Asian economic crisis. This had given the lectures a particular prominence in the evolving debate on social policy and economic growth in Malaysia. The seminar on active labour policy development in French-speaking Africa, held in Abidjan in December 1997, had involved the Regional Office and the multidisciplinary team, and had a distinctive regional focus. It had been greatly appreciated, but this type of activity could not continue in the future, as RBTC allocations to the Institute had been terminated in 1997.
16. Finally, the new Institute programmes depend on networking and new partnerships with outside bodies. In 1998 the Institute had made a deliberate attempt to develop partnerships with business associations. These included the Prince of Wales Business Leaders' Forum, the US Conference Board, the Caux Round Table, the Copenhagen Centre for Social Cohesion, the American Management Association, the Global Business Network, and the Eczacibasi Group in Turkey. The Institute hoped to develop relationships with trade union centres in a variety of regional locations in the course of 1999.
17. The Institute had been entrusted with the task of preparing the Report of the new Director-General to the International Labour Conference in 1999. The Report would address the future perspectives of the ILO in the twenty-first century. This exercise covered the totality of the ILO's programmes and activities, as well as all its means of action, and involved very extensive consultations and analytical work which would continue into the first quarter of 1999. As this was an unforeseen project, involving nearly half of the Institute's Professional staff, it inevitably had an impact on the momentum of the regular programme, but it provided the Institute with an unprecedented opportunity to contribute to the development of the ILO's strategic thinking for the future.
18. Turning to specific programmes, he explained that the programme on business and society focused on three areas: global production networks, corporate social initiatives, and employers' organizations.
19. A meeting had been held in Geneva in March 1998 on global production networks and local jobs (paragraphs 20 to 22). The papers prepared for the workshop had become part of the reading requirement of a course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the geography of globalization, which was an example of how the Institute research work entered into the curriculum of educational institutions. The Institute had also held a workshop, jointly with UNCTAD, in early November which had examined industrial upgrading and explored the role of business associations in development.
20. On corporate social initiatives, a new staff seminar series had been inaugurated (paragraph 26). Two meetings were planned for 1999 as preparatory events for the second ILO Enterprise Forum: the first was a round table, organized jointly with the Enterprise and Cooperative Development Department, on social codes and multinational business in February 1999; it would be self-financing and bring together senior executives from multinational enterprises to identify good practice and review corporate experience in the implementation and monitoring of codes of conduct. The second was a workshop on social programmes for local community development, tentatively planned for May 1999, to review enterprise social programmes in industrialized countries, developing countries, and transition economies.
21. With respect to the programme component on employers' organizations, the Institute had collaborated with the Bureau for Employers' Activities in preparing a questionnaire for the ILO's forthcoming high-level meeting on the future of employers' organizations. A meeting on the role of employers' organizations in developing countries was planned to identify the role of employers' organizations at both the macro and micro-economic levels.
22. As regards future perspectives for the "Business and Society" programme as a whole, the Institute would pursue empirical studies of success stories concerning employers' organizations. It would examine partnerships between employers' organizations and intermediary organizations such as local authorities or business coalitions and community-based organizations. It would also explore the possibilities of initiating an electronic forum for business and society, and of enhancing the regional perspective of the programme as a whole.
23. Finally, as regards intersectoral and educational programmes, he drew attention to the Abidjan regional seminar (paragraph 37) and the changes introduced in the Institute's internship course (paragraphs 42 to 44). The virtual conference on ICT and jobs had yielded valuable information on the techniques of utilizing electronic media. The results of the social exclusion project, which the Institute had completed in the previous biennium (paragraphs 61 to 64 of the report), continued to draw attention: this would provide input into the World Bank's forthcoming World Development Report, 2000, and had been used to draw up World Bank country programmes in Armenia and in Albania.
24. Mr. Khurshid Ahmed (Worker member) conveyed the appreciation and support of the Workers' group for the work of the Institute and for the report of the Director. Despite the limited resources at its disposal, the Institute had carried out work of high value to constituents, particularly to Workers.
25. The role of the Institute was not only to provide a global forum on employment and social policy issues, but also to create international networks and educational programmes in these fields. In this respect, the workers were placed in a less advantageous position as compared to governments and employers who had access to education, information and resources to project their points of view. The Workers' group therefore expected the Institute to continue to help trade unions to develop their research capacity. The globalization of the economy, the development of new technologies and the liberalization of trade endangered the respect for trade union and human rights, job security and the quality of working and living conditions. The Workers' group hoped that the programmes of the Institute, particularly that on labour and society, would not only help to strengthen workers' organizations in the organized sector, but also assist workers of the informal and rural sectors to obtain better living and working conditions.
26. With reference to paragraph 8 of the report, he expressed the hope that the Institute would practise close cooperation with the multidisciplinary teams, particularly with the officials of ACTRAV, both at headquarters and in the regions.
27. The Workers' group had appreciated the conference which had been held on information and communication technology, jobs and work with the assistance of the World Bank. He hoped that the outcome of the meeting would appear in hard copy, as trade unions did not always have access to electronic technologies.
28. The Workers' group also appreciated the work undertaken by the Institute for the Report of the Director-General to the 1999 International Labour Conference. He hoped that the Report would take into account the challenges faced by the working class, both in the urban and rural sectors and in developing countries. He referred not only to employment and unemployment, but also to the issues of the quality of employment, the promotion and defence of trade union rights, the elimination of discrimination, the problems of young workers, the consequences of changes in the labour market, and the development of new technology.
29. He hoped that the two consultative groups had links with both developed and developing countries. He would welcome details on the electronic network in terms of the number of responses received and the workers' organizations involved. He was pleased that the electronic network had been supplemented by written communications to trade unions which had no access to the Internet, which was particularly important for unions in developing countries.
30. The Workers' group considered that the network should meet some of the core concerns of the workers, particularly about how trade unions could participate effectively in follow-up on the Declaration. Other issues of concern related to working conditions; the security of jobs; the deterioration of the conditions of workers and its impact on productivity; the need for safety net institutions; and a clear focus on human resources and tripartite dialogue. He also referred to training and retraining needs and the special problems of the rural sector, particularly in developing countries, including the implementation of the Rural Workers' Organizations Convention, 1975 (No. 141). With regard to the case-studies, he urged close association with trade unions in the respective countries.
31. The Workers' group appreciated the work carried out under the business and society project. They hoped that the role of organized labour and the importance of trade union rights and better working conditions would also be taken into account in this programme. Experience demonstrated that collaboration between workers and management at the enterprise level brought better results in terms of productivity, quality of goods and industrial peace, while increasing the welfare of workers and the progress of society as a whole.
32. Mr. Anand (Employer member) shared many of Mr. Ahmed's comments. However, both employers and unions faced difficulties in gaining public recognition. He expressed his gratitude to the Institute for conceiving the two programmes -- labour and society, and business and society -- and for its contribution to developing an integrated concept of the enterprise in the ILO. He emphasized the importance of enterprise development for social cohesion and sustainable development.
33. Over the last six years in which he had been a member of the Board, he had noted a tendency to reduce the status of the Institute. In recent years, the Director-General had been absent from the meetings of the Board. The Governing Body was aware of this. Experience had shown that in cases where the chief executive took no interest in research and development, the organizations concerned became locked in introspection. The Director-General had an important role to play as Chairperson of the Board, and he requested Ms. Hagen to convey this message. Eliminating the academic membership of the Board had had a negative impact on the work of the Institute and its Board, as it had deprived it of fruitful exchanges and encouraged a restricted outlook. The recent Nobel Prize winner, Professor Amartya Sen, had recently quoted the work done by the Institute. There was a growing need for the ILO to mobilize the world's intellectual capacities to help face the problems of the future.
34. Over the six years of his association with the Institute, despite many handicaps, and without adequate recognition for its work by the top management, the Institute had kept its flag flying. That spoke volumes for the conviction, commitment and single-minded devotion of its Director and the staff. He trusted that the new Director-General would take note of these remarks when he assumed office.
35. Turning to the labour and society programme, Mr. Anand suggested that there was a need to examine the issue of the depoliticization of unions. Union politicization (mainly at the national and international levels) was one reason why industry was generally very apprehensive of unions. The issue of politicization needed scrutiny, particularly because this tendency was now appearing among NGOs. This would help transform adversarial positions between workers and employers into relationships of partnership. He also called for an interface between the programmes on business and on labour.
36. As regards the business and society programme, the Institute could support the activities of the ILO field structures, and MDT specialists could benefit from the work of the Institute. While the business and society programme referred to the role of MNEs in social areas, such as employment and poverty eradication, it was important not to underestimate the role of SMEs, which could contribute much more to the solution of many social problems than MNEs. In this respect the potential of the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-up was considerable. However, rights at work would accrue only if there was stable and sustainable work on a long-term basis. The Institute could usefully explore how the fundamental principles could be translated into action and contribute to economic growth. In conclusion, he expressed pride as a member of the Board that the Institute had been chosen to prepare the first Report of the new Director-General.
37. The Chairperson (Ms. Hagen) drew attention to her own long and close involvement with the Institute. She had supported the Institute not only in its many activities, but also in integrating its work into the ILO's overall agenda of work. At the very beginning of her tenure, the Institute had organized a very comprehensive seminar on the future of the Bretton Woods institutions, which she had had the honour to chair. She had also actively participated in a series of seminars that the Institute had organized in the areas of globalization and workers' rights, social exclusion and global production. She emphasized that the Institute's public lectures had been of great value, and that she had benefited from the dynamic intellectual exchanges that the Institute had organized. Most recently she had been involved in working with the Institute on the new technologies for virtual learning.
38. Mr. Anand (Employer member) said that his criticism was not intended as a personal criticism. His concern was with matters of policy, which he wished to bring to the attention of the Governing Body.
39. Mr. Ahmed (Worker member), on behalf of the Workers' group, shared the view that the Institute had played a very important role, and expressed his satisfaction that the Institute had been entrusted with the work of preparing the Director-General's Report to the Conference for 1999. He fully supported the idea behind Mr. Anand's statement that more resources should be available to the Institute and regarding partnership at the enterprise level. However, there was also a need for the protection of the minimum wage and working conditions. The focus should be on workers' unity, to enable them to contribute to a better social and economic quality of life. As regards Mr. Anand's comment on the depoliticization of unions, he recalled that it was a basic right of workers to affiliate with national and international organizations in full freedom, without the intervention of employers and governments, as reflected in Convention No. 87. This was a right also available to employers. It was of importance to them, because there were cases where certain governments prevented such affiliations.
40. Mr. Imoisili (Employer member) expressed his full satisfaction with an incisive and perceptive report, and joined his colleagues in commending its quality. He had had the privilege to participate in many of the Institute's events, including the seminar on global production and local jobs, and he could confirm the quality of these activities. He was proud to have been involved in efforts to retain the Institute.
41. In the hurricane of globalization, the Institute was doing very valuable research on the changing nature of institutions of business, labour and society. However, some new questions could be put on the research agenda. For example, what were the limits of these changes? When did freedom become anarchy? Was employment to be measured in terms of jobs or duration? What was the appropriate definition of an employee? What was the future of pension schemes when the share of full-time employees decreased? With shorter working hours, what did people do with increased free time? Would this trend be reflected in the growth of entrepreneurship? Finally, he stressed the importance of institutionalizing the new strength and efforts of the Institute, which needed to be sustained in future.
42. Ms. O'Donovan (Worker member) referred to the general concern about the extent to which the work of the Institute was being integrated into the overall policy-making and strategy of the Organization. Much valuable work undertaken by the Institute did not find its way into the processes of the Organization. A detailed analysis needed to be undertaken of how the Institute could play a greater role in the overall work of the Organization.
43. She thanked the Director for his introduction, which had supplemented the report in a very useful way. The labour and society programme was one of the most valuable projects that unions could engage in. How could the Institute get to the leadership of the unions and involve leaders in the kind of discussion which the Institute wanted to emerge from this project? Were sufficient resources going into this project? The related question was whether the outcomes of this project would be sufficient to meet the challenges that the unions faced. How would the outcomes be distributed to trade union organizations around the world? As regards the question of the depoliticization of trade unions raised by Mr. Anand, she pointed out that business was not immune from political involvement and, compared to trade unions, business involvement was usually less transparent and more influential. Unions should be free to engage in whatever activities they wished. That was the meaning of independent and free trade unions. As regards the informal sector, the role of the ILO was not to make jobs in the informal sector better and more productive, but rather to integrate the informal sector into the formal sector in a way that fully adhered to the minimum standards and conditions laid down in the various ILO Conventions. She welcomed the Institute's participation in activities of the World Bank. For a long time the Workers' group had sought greater involvement by the ILO with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and would like to see this cooperation continued. The forum on women as agents of change was an extremely innovative and creative proposal, as it clearly covered a very important dimension. It would also be useful to examine the role of women as agents of change in employers' and workers' organizations and the extent to which they were changing agendas within those organizations.
44. The representative of the Government of Brazil congratulated the Institute on its substantive programme of activities in 1998. His Government had stated at the last session of the Board that the work on the State should cut across both the business and society, and labour and society, programmes. He could now note that was indeed the case. The outcome of these programmes could be used by governments as a source of analysis in reference to state action. He requested further details on the programme on the State and society. Finally, he noted that, on various occasions during the current Governing Body session, the role of the Institute had been highlighted, which was a clear sign of the growing importance of this institution and its mandate, which he believed would play an increasingly analytical role within the ILO.
45. The representative of the Government of the Republic of Korea congratulated Mr. Gopinath and the staff of the Institute on the work done and in progress. The major issues today seemed to converge on employment; this was the crucial issue in achieving the common goal of social progress and justice. In this respect, he expressed the hope that the Institute might devote more of its resources to the issue of employment generation and related issues. The Institute should not only deal with current issues, but should anticipate and prepare for future problems. The Institutes's programmes should also continue to take into account the diversity of countries, in terms of levels of development and differences in social, economic and cultural patterns.
46. Mr. Sunmonu (Worker member) congratulated the Institute on the work done and for its forward-looking research activities. The work of the Institute seemed considerably ahead of some ILO departments, and there was a need to examine how "backward linkages" could be established, so that the ILO could derive the maximum benefit from such work.
47. Mr. Radwan (Director of the ILO's Development Policies Department, POLDEV) commented on linkages between the Institute and other ILO departments. The comparative advantage of the Institute helped it stay at the forefront as far as the emerging issues in the world of work and employment were concerned. He gave two examples of cooperation between the Institute and the technical departments, such as POLDEV. First, the whole area of poverty and social exclusion had initially been developed by the Institute with the close collaboration of various technical departments such as his own, and then taken over and absorbed by the Department's own programme. Secondly, the preparatory work for the 1999 Report of the Director-General led by the Institute set new standards of cooperation and transparency. It was a process marked by intense consultation and exchanges of views between the Institute and the ILO.
48. Mr. Hultin (Director of the ILO's Enterprise and Cooperative Development Department) also referred to cooperation between the Institute and the ILO. His department had worked closely with the Institute to organize the virtual conference, which was a pioneering experiment for the ILO. There had also been close cooperation with the Institute to explore three aspects of enterprise policies in global markets: combining the social implications of business with the business interests of enterprises; enterprise community involvement; and the problems raised by differences in legislative frameworks in different countries. In order to explore and clarify this new agenda for the enterprise, the ILO needed an outreach not only to a wide variety of actors in the business and institutional sectors, but also in the academic world. The role of the Institute was indispensable for such ILO work.
49. The Director of the Institute thanked members of the Board for their support and for their constructive suggestions. He was pleased to confirm and acknowledge Ms. Hagen's support for the work of the Institute. In response to Mr. Ahmed's comments, the Director recognized the importance of the questions of trade union rights, youth unemployment and the informal sector for the future ILO and Institute agendas. Details of the consultative groups and the case-studies would be made available. These had been decided in full consultation with ACTRAV and workers' organizations. As regards the issue of the interface between the programmes of labour and society, and business and society, he emphasized that, for the time being, these programmes sought to understand the concerns of the respective ILO constituencies themselves, but naturally, as the research progressed, an interface would emerge. As regards the time-frame, the programmes would have to run for at least two biennia if they were to produce useful results. He took note of Mr. Anand's comments on the importance of the social role of SMEs, and pointed out that the Institute would be focusing on employers' associations and intermediary organizations, rather than on SMEs as such, which was a function of the Enterprise and Cooperative Development Department. Mr. Imoisili had raised some very far-reaching questions which, although they could not be suitably addressed within the context of the Institute itself, would no doubt be taken into account in the Report of the Director-General, due to their importance for the future strategies of the ILO. In response to Ms. O'Donovan's and Mr. Sunmonu's concern about the links between the ILO and the Institute, Mr. Radwan and Mr. Hultin and the Chairperson herself had made reference to specific examples. As Director, he had taken particular care to ensure that the Institute's programme was designed to produce such synergies, and the report pointed that out. There were also a variety of forms of constant informal cooperation. However, Ms. O'Donovan had referred to a more fundamental question: how institutionalized structures for Institute/ILO exchanges could be developed. This question went beyond the Institute itself, and raised broader questions of research policy and programming in the ILO as a whole. These were important issues of ILO policy which had to be considered in a broader context. As regards the impact of the new Institute programmes, he recalled that the objective of these programmes was, first, to obtain a better picture of how trade unions and employers' organizations were responding to globalization; and secondly, to act as a catalyst to improve and deepen future ILO activities in support of the social actors and to promote the exchange of comparative experience. He took note of Ms. O'Donovan's valuable suggestion regarding the proposed conference on women, which he hoped would contribute to the development of gender policy within the ILO. As regards future work on the role of the State, raised by the representative of the Government of Brazil, the Institute would examine the ways in which the activities of the State were changing specifically in terms of employment, social security, human resource development, and industrial relations.
50. Mr. Anand welcomed the Director's reference to comparative studies on the role of employers' organizations, which would indeed be of value. He emphasized the importance of studies exploring prevention, rather than the settlement of disputes, in the field of industrial relations. Finally, he proposed the restoration of the independent academic members of the Board.
51. The Chairperson noted that there was general agreement with the recommendation to the Governing Body that it should examine ways of restoring the academic composition of the Board.
52. The Board took note of the report of the Director.
Acceptance of contributions and gifts
53. The Board of the Institute recommends that the Governing Body accept with thanks the additional amount received under the Phelan legacy, and the contribution of the Employers' Confederations of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden to the Internship Course.
Geneva, 18 November 1998.
Point for decision: Paragraph 53.
Appendix
[Append documents INS.B.XL/1 and INS.B.XL/2 ( Report of the Director and gifts to the Institute]
1. INS.B.XL/1, appended.
2. INS.B.XL/2, appended.