ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC—The Grenada government said Tuesday it had filed 18 reports with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in September last year and is moving towards a comprehensive review of the labor code in the first quarter of 2025.
Labour Minister Claudette Joseph told Parliament that the government intended to have the review this year, but that was not possible because the intention was to conduct consultations with the various stakeholders before the amendment was presented to legislators.
Claudette Joseph
She said that Grenada, as a signatory to the ILO convention, has failed to comply with the reporting requirements. In the process of putting the reports together, several weaknesses had been identified in domestic legislation.
“I am pleased to announce to this Honourable House that on 16th September 2024, we filed 18 reports that were outstanding, some of them were overdue by a decade,” said Joseph, explaining that these reports range from matters about workmen compensation in agriculture to occupational safety and health; freedom of association and the right to organize as well as public contracts, protection of wages and the right to collective bargaining.
“One of the benefits of filing these reports is that they allow states to readily recognize gaps in domestic legislation…So in preparing the reports for filing, we were able to identify certain gaps that we hope to fill when we do the comprehensive amendment to the labor code, which we aim to accomplish before the end of the first quarter in 2025,” she told Parliament.
According to Joseph, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration, which came into office in June 2022, inherited a situation at the Ministry of Labour in which the country defaulted on its obligations under the ILO convention.
She said Grenada needed to comply with Article 22 of the ILO Constitution, which states that each member country agrees to make an annual report to the ILO on the measures it has taken to give effect to the provisions of Conventions to which it is a party.
“Grenada’s last report we filed was in 2015, so the country was in default. The ILO conventions cover a wide area of social and labor issues, including basic human rights, minimum wages, industrial relations, employment policy, social dialogue, social security, and other issues,” she added.
and then  in September){kind=link}