What is IALI?
IALI, whose English name is International Association of Labour Inspection and French name is Association Internationale de l’Inspection du Travail (AIIT), is an international professional association. It defines itself as independent, without political or religious ties, and its members are labour inspection bodies, not individuals or companies.
Founded in 1972, it currently has members from over one hundred countries, including industrialized, developing, and transition economies. It is neither a United Nations agency nor an organ of the International Labour Organization (ILO): it is an independent professional association that states it works closely with the International Labour Office, without being organically dependent on it.
At the time of consultation, the IALI website listed its secretariat in Albacete, Spain. The available information does not allow us to determine whether this is a permanent headquarters or a secretariat linked to the presidency or the entity that performs coordinating functions in each period; therefore, this information is not definitively included in this record.
Purpose and scope of action
IALI’s stated objective is to contribute to improving working conditions worldwide through the exchange of information and experience among the labor inspectorates of its member countries. The association does not issue regulations, has no enforcement powers, and does not replace national labor inspectorates, which retain their full legal authority in each country.
Its declared scope of work includes working conditions in a broad sense, occupational safety and health, irregular employment and child labor, always from the perspective of inspection as a public function of monitoring and controlling regulatory compliance.
Functions and main lines of work
IALI’s activity is structured primarily around three axes.
- Congresses and regional meetings. It organizes international congresses and regional meetings that bring together labor inspection officials from different countries to share experiences and best practices.
- Information exchange. It facilitates contact between labor inspectorates in countries with very different regulatory frameworks and levels of development, including technical assistance to administrations that are strengthening their inspection system.
- Institutional communication. It maintains its own channels of dissemination among its members regarding regulatory, methodological and organizational developments in the field of labor inspection.
Contribution to safety and health at work
IALI’s contribution to occupational safety and health (OSH) is indirect but significant: it does not inspect companies or impose fines or penalties , as these functions belong exclusively to the national labor inspection bodies that are its members. Its value lies in providing these bodies with an international forum to compare how compliance with occupational safety and health regulations is monitored in practice.
To understand this contribution, it’s important to keep in mind what a workplace safety inspection entails: verifying on-site compliance with the employer’s preventive obligations, requiring the correction of deficiencies, and, when appropriate, initiating the corresponding sanctioning procedure in accordance with the legislation of each country. IALI does not carry out any of these actions; it provides a forum where organizations that do can exchange criteria and experience.
Relationship with the ORP International Foundation
IALI joins the ORP International Foundation’s institutional advisory committee as an association of labor inspectorates, not of companies or individual technicians: it brings together inspection bodies from more than one hundred countries since its founding in 1972. This status distinguishes its contribution to the committee from that of professional associations or insurance entities: it represents the public control aspect of regulatory compliance.
Practical application
For a prevention professional, knowing about the existence of IALI helps to place the labor inspection of one’s own country within an international exchange network, and explains why certain inspection criteria or methodologies circulate from one national system to another.
For an organization that operates in several countries, understanding that IALI has no regulatory or sanctioning capacity avoids attributing to it a role that does not correspond to it: the applicable legal reference always remains that of the national labor inspection body of each jurisdiction.
