A Century of Striving for Social Justice

Abstract

This year the International Labour Organisation celebrated its centenary at the annual conference in June, drawing around 7500 delegates, advisers and visitors, with Theresa May amongst the heads of state and government who attended. During the year there have been events around the world as member States have applauded the ILO’s work and its centenary project on The Future of Work. But here at home the centenary has been little noticed, even by the trade union movement. The ILO is not high on our domestic agenda and perhaps been seen primarily as a route of solidarity activity. Given the importance of the ILO as the UN specialised agency for work and labour matters, this is somewhat surprising. The ILO represents the international dimension of union and worker rights and employment policy. I have been extremely fortunate to be a regular visitor to the ILO in Geneva, first representing the TUC in the Committee on the Application of Standards for some years, and now a member of the Governing Body and the Committee on Freedom of Association. The centenary seems to be a good time to look at whether the ILO offers us some avenues and opportunities that we could utilise further. It seems to have been different 100 years ago, as it has been said that the structure of the ILO was a British construction. Many of the founding ideas and principles emerged from British and Irish trade unions. Perhaps the most fundamental of these, that labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity or article of commerce, was first advanced by Irish economist John Kells Ingham at the British Trades Union Congress of 1880 held in Dublin. This guiding principle of respect for the human dignity of the labour force informed the other eight founding principles: freedom of association, decent wages and equitable conditions of employment, weekly working limits, abolition of child labour, equal pay for work of equal value, and a labour inspection system which included women’s voices. The principles were aimed even in 1919 at achieving social justice for universal peace, recognising that ‘conditions of labour exist involving such injustice, hardship and privation to large numbers of people as to produce unrest so great that the peace and harmony of the world are imperilled’. That mission of social justice has not changed and has been reaffirmed in this year’s centenary declaration just as it was in the Constitution and the Declarations since that time. Most importantly, the mission is one to which the three constituents, the Government group, the Employers’ Group and the Workers’ Group, have all signed up, throughout the life of the ILO, although of course there will be differences about what this means in reality. Nevertheless the ILO’s work: the body of standards, the technical assistance provided to States, the policy development and research work, is all directed towards promoting social justice through human and labour rights, and sets an international framework for our domestic provisions. ILOStandardsandtheSupervisorySystem The ILO is probably best known in the UK for its body of international labour standards. The decisions of the Committee on Freedom of Association have refined and clarified the meaning of the principles, so we know for example that the blanket ban on solidarity action and the overly complex regulation of industrial action are all aspects of our law which are challengeable. However it is rare for a complaint to made by Uk trade unions through the ILO’s ‘supervisory system’ that monitors and regulates State compliance. The supervisory system can seem somewhat opaque and difficult to navigate, although in practice it is not complex to use. There are essentially two routes for allegations that member States are not meeting their international obligations: the ‘regular’ supervisory process or use of one of the ‘special’ procedures. The former is a process of public discussion of whether the State has met its obligations, which takes place in the annual conference Committee on the Application of Standards (CAS). It is an opportunity for us to air concerns and call the government to account in front of its peers. The ‘special’ procedures allow individual unions as well as confederations to press specific allegations about violations...