The eighth annual report of the International Labor Organization to the United Nations noted that certain projects, although desirable, had had to be deferred or eliminated from the 1955 program and budget for financial reasons. A number of periodical technical meetings which would ordinarily have been held in 1955 had had to be postponed, and certain ILO projects under the Expanded Program of Technical Assistance as well as a number of ILO field activities financed under the regular budget had been also adversely affected by the shortage of funds. The first chapter of the report dealt with major developments in the work of ILO in 1953 and the early part of 1954; these lay in the fields of productivity, wages and housing in underdeveloped areas, workers in non-metropolitan territories, indigenous workers in independent countries, agricultural labor including plantation workers, and national labor departments. The second chapter of the report summarized the semi-continuous activities of ILO in such fields as occupational safety and health, manpower, and statistics.