The Ministry of Labor's responsibilities include the promotion of sound labor relations and support for collective bargaining. Government laws provide assistance in settling trade disputes and a mechanism for conflict resolution. Labor standards are crafted mainly to organize work conditions and employment, and to make them consistent with government laws and regulations. They include fixing a minimum wage, inspecting labor conditions, and overseeing health and safety programs and social security. The Ministry is more recently being drawn into activities to promote full and productive employment through training, to increase employment, and to attend to the special problems of women and migrant workers.

The October 1969 amendments to the Labor Law were primarily aimed at increasing employment opportunities by creating a competitive investment climate. Two especially notable features of the amendments were that trade unions may not interfere, by means of the collective bargaining process, with certain management decisions in important personnel matters such as recruitment, promotion, transfer, assignment of duties, limitation on employment on account of redundancy, and dismissal on disciplinary grounds, and that new industrial enterprises with pioneer status were given a minimum five-year guarantee that certain terms and conditions of employment which are negotiated with trade unions need not be more favorable than those prescribed under the law, except with the prior approval of the Minister of Labor.

In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to tripartism to ensure effective and participative administration in labor matters. The focal role of the Ministry of Labor can be seen in the tripartite bodies that have been established to seek the participation and consultation of employers' and workers' organizations to formulate labor policies. In most cases the tripartite bodies act in an advisory capacity. They include: the National Labour Advisory Council which is importantly involved in discussions on labor, employment and manpower issues by the Government trade unions and employers' organizations, meets three-to-four times a year, and is composed of 12 representatives from the Government and employers' and workers' organizations; the National Wage Council which covers such workers as shop assistants, hotel and catering workers, cinema workers and stevedores and cargo-handlers, and which provides minimum remuneration and communications-machinery for workers in industries where none is available; and the Manpower Development Board which is responsib