A.—7.

industrial undertakings which are owned and managed by Europeans." The Committees report included Draft Conclusions containing fifty-three provisions. With few exceptions these provisions were adopted in the Committee by unanimous votes or by votes in which the minority was very small. To safeguard their responsibilities to the employers whom they represented the employers' representatives voted against the whole list of provisions at the end of the discussion, these being carried by thirteen votes to nine in the Committee. They stated that if and when a Draft Convention came before the Conference they would reconsider their attitude. The report and Draft Conclusions were unanimously adopted by the Committee and submitted to the Conference. RECRUITING, PLACING, AND CONDITIONS OF LABOUR (EQUALITY OF TREATMENT) OF MIGRANT WORKERS. Following the usual procedure, a Committee examined this subject and reported to the Conference. It held eight sittings, and took as the basis of its discussion the report prepared for the consultation of Governments by the International Labour Office. Proceedings in respect of this subject were without opposition either in Committee or in Conference, there being a unanimous vote of Conference placing the subject on the agenda of the 1939 session. A resolution was also adopted by the Conference requesting the Governing Body of the International Labour Office to consider reviewing the question of the simplification of the formalities to be fulfilled and documents to be completed by migrant workers. REGULATION OF HOURS OF WORK AND REST PERIODS OF PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS (AND THEIR ASSISTANTS) OF VEHICLES ENGAGED IN ROAD TRANSPORT. In the Committee's report to Conference it was stated that, despite the great diversity of the problems associated with transport, large majorities had been given by its members for its proposals. Its report had been adopted by thirty-seven votes to ten, and its Draft Conclusions by thirty-six to ten. On the consideration of the Committee's report in Conference, M. Delepeleire, Belgium employers' adviser, speaking for the employers' group, announced that it could not collaborate with the Committee on a reduction of working-hours question, and that it would vote against the adoption of the report and against placing the question on the agenda for the next Conference. He moved an amendment to the Draft Conclusions the substance of which denied the competence of the International Labour Organization to apply regulations to drivers who own their own vehicles, these drivers being owners as distinct from wage-earners. In the discussion it was pointed out that in the Committee the only supports of the amendment were the employers' members. It was also argued that, as the employers in negotiations for improved conditions for transport workers usually contended that any new demand was impossible because of unfair and unreasonable competition from owner-drivers and members of their families who were subject to no regulations, they should take a view consistent with this in the Conference. The amendment was rejected by sixty-two votes to twenty-one on a show of hands. All the points in the Committee's Draft Conclusions were then adopted seriatim, and the report was adopted as a whole. GENERALISATION OF THE REDUCTION OF WORKING-HOURS. The generalization of the reduction of working-hours was placed on the agenda of the 1938 Conference, as a result of the adoption by the 1937 Conference of a workers' group motion deploring the slow rate of progress made towards the international regulation for the reduction of the hours of work. A report in five volumes, submitted by the International Labour Office, was taken as the basis of the Committee's discussion, with the object of determining the list of points on which the Governments were to be consulted. At the Committee's second meeting the employers' group urged that the Committee should proceed first by a general discussion on the reduction of working-hours. The workers' group objected to a general discussion, as being superfluous, seeing that in 1935 the Conference had adopted a forty-hour week Convention in principle and in 1936 and 1937 Conventions applying the principle to separate industries and stated that the only matter the Committee should consider was whether a single Draft Convention covering all economic activities or, on the contrary, whether several Draft Conventions should be aimed at. As a result of this difference of opinion the discussions in the Committee, which continued for the whole of two lengthy sittings and a part of a third, proceeded in such a manner as enabled all members to express views on every aspect of the question, a summary of the attitude taken by each of the three groups being embodied in the Committee's report to the Conference. A Draft Resolution on the reduction of hours of work in coal-mines was adopted by seventy-three votes to thirty-six.

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