An Old but Gold Challenge for International Labour Law: Rethinking the Personal Scope of ILO Standards

Beyond “Legal Equality” vs. “Difference” Feminism: Leah F. Vosko Interviews Eileen Boris on Women and the ILO

The theory of ‘core labour rights’ is the well-known set of universally established minimum best practices and safeguards in respect of some basic labour standards. known as core labour standards in the world economy. This concept is devoted by ILO to promote or establish social justice and labour rights to recognise labours peace which is the most crucial part of the economic prosperity. The implementation of these measures ensures the benefits of the majority workers, rather than the rich only. This study has been prepared to examine the key challenges in implementing the international labour standards in Bangladesh garments sectors. The fundamental labour laws of Bangladesh are designed in accordance with principles of ILO, but non-enforcement of domestic regulations indicates disobedience with international core labour standards and ILO conventions too. The qualitative method has been used in the gathering and the analysing of data of this research. This study has found that most of the rules and regulations of labour laws of Bangladesh are followed by ILO standards. However, their practical approaches show an indication of dismay. Thus, it is submitted that the local jurisdiction of Bangladesh has a poor application of international core labour standards and the ILO conventions which causes uncountable dilemmas to the humanity and the peaceful garments industries. This study has suggested that the government must take necessary steps to implement core international labour standards effectively in domestic legal system and carry out a proper observation to establish social justice and peaceful garments industries in Bangladesh.

LABOR HISTORY SYMPOSIUM

4 | International Union Rights | 26/2 FOCUS | THE ILO AT 100 The International Labour Organisation: Origins and Evolution In celebrating the centenary of the International Labour Organisation, it is valuable to look back and consider how the early ILO evolved and in turn helped to shape the modern world. In its original conception, the ILO was clearly a response to the threat of world revolution. However, the ILO quickly evolved in directions unforeseen by its founders. In doing so, it developed innovative mechanisms and programmes which foreshadowed, in important ways, certain practices of global governance that emerged after the Second World War. Moreover, the ILO was intimately involved in the construction of welfare states, in Europe and beyond, and in the early formulation of ideas and practices of development in the non-Western world. ‘An alternative to violent revolution’ The ILO was born at a moment of great uncertainty, when European empires were collapsing and world revolution seemed a real possibility. Following the Bolshevik revolution of November 1917, waves of labour strikes, political strikes, and revolutions had swept across central Europe, and threatened to extend even to Western liberal democracies such as Britain and France. Already during the war, trade unions had submitted a series of demands for the peace settlement to come, including the recognition of workers’ rights and minimum labour standards. For the victorious European powers, some kind of compromise with workers’ demands seemed absolutely necessary. As an eyewitness to the negotiations in Paris later put it, the ILO was ‘an alternative to violent revolution’. Of course, it was no easy task to balance the demands of workers with the competing interests of European governments, not to mention those of important countries outside Europe such as the United States and Japan. Contrary to the hopes of trade unionists, Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles, which addressed labour issues, articulated labour standards only as an aspirational set of ‘General principles’, subject to important caveats and conditions. The high ideals and goals towards which the international labour movement had struggled over several decades were thus carefully couched in non-binding language. On the other hand, the establishment of a permanent international organisation to address labour issues, with its tripartite structure, was a significant achievement. By bringing together representatives of government, workers, and employers on a regular basis, the ILO’s ‘General Conference’ came to be seen as a ‘Parliament of labour’. The formal involvement of non-state actors in creating international standards was a remarkable innovation, as was the ability of the conference to produce ‘soft law’ Recommendations as well as ‘hard law’ draft Conventions. Additionally, Part XIII introduced normal institutional procedures for the implementation of international labour standards, notification, and accountability. As such, the ILO offered institutionalised mechanisms of class reconciliation and cooperation that could, in theory, progressively implement higher labour standards and address new issues as they arose. In its early years, the ILO conventions and recommendations dealt with hours of work, unemployment, maternity protection, the minimum age for employment, and labour inspections. Expansion and resistance Under the leadership of the charismatic French Socialist politician, Albert Thomas, the International Labour Office in Geneva grew rapidly and established a network of branch offices and national correspondence. A Scientific Division within the Office carried out research and served as a ‘clearing house’ of information about member countries’ labour legislation and standards, supporting the Office’s claims to apolitical expert authority. Thomas and his principal deputies, the Irishman Edward Phelan and the Englishman Harold Butler, also undertook frequent ‘missions’ to member countries, meeting with trade unions and working through them to generate public pressure on their governments to ratify ILO conventions. Thomas’s vision of the ILO as a ‘really living’ organisation thereby led it into an ever widening sphere of action, including a general economic enquiry into possible production, fact-finding missions to Hungary and Upper Silesia, and a mission to Russia to gather information on methods of industrial organisation. Of course, this expansive approach to the ILO’s mandate prompted a certain degree of pushback. Governments of countries where fact-finding missions were carried out found these activities discomforting, while others worried that the ILO was straying beyond...

In 2017, ILO issued recommendation no. 2015 on employment and decent work for peace and resilience, which is an international labour standard of particular relevance and importance for managing the labour market in times of crisis, and especially so in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. A body of generally applicable international labour standards provides social protection to workers during the pandemic and applies to the challenges to the labour market in such times. The Report describes the labour policy of ILO and international labour standards in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as ILO’s concrete response to the present crisis. Finally, the Report presents a reminder that ILS and social protection in the future must be able to handle social risks resulting from biological vulnerabilities on part of workers and the importance of the principle of universality in social protection.

This chapter discusses the provisions in the Canada–EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) on the protection of labour and environmental standards and human rights. It first outlines the obligations of the parties to protect labour and environmental standards, human rights, and democratic principles. Next, it discusses certain means by which the economic obligations of the parties may be interpreted, either expressly or by implication, to reflect these values. Third, it analyses the rights of the parties, in the context of exceptions, to adopt measures to protect labour and environmental standards and human rights obligations, and the extent to which CETA’s obligations might expand the ordinary jurisdictional scope of these rights.

The purpose of this article is to clarify the essence of international labor law (transnational labor law). This article presents and analyzes the relationship of international labor law with public international law and national labor law. The article also focuses on the possibility of considering it as a complex field. The article emphasizes the importance of introducing international labor law as a subject in higher education. The article quotes and discusses the opinions of various scholars regarding whether international labor law is a field of public law or private law, a sub-field of international law or private international law, etc. Subjects and sources of international labor law regulation were defined to determine the attitude towards a specific field of law. This article states that national labor law should be in line with the goals of the International Labor Organization to reduce social inequality, to regulate and protect labor and associated labor relations in accordance with international labor standards and universally recognized human rights. It has been suggested that while international labor law is a branch of public law, it is closely related to private law, in particular, to the national labor law. Other conclusions have been made in this article based on the research methods.

Reviewed by: Women's ILO: Transnational Networks, Global Labour Standards and Gender Equity, 1919 to Present ed. by Eileen Boris, Dorothea Hoehtker, and Susan Zimmermann Elizabeth McKillen Eileen Boris, Dorothea Hoehtker, and Susan Zimmermann, eds., Women's ILO: Transnational Networks, Global Labour Standards and Gender Equity, 1919 to Present ( Leiden: Brill 2018) The International Labour Organization (ilo) will celebrate its centennial in 2019. Studies by scholars and ilo functionaries of this long-lived and uniquely structured affiliate of the League of Nations and United Nations abound, but the role of women in shaping its policies has received only sporadic attention. Such neglect is not surprising because, until recently, women have constituted a very small percentage of the members of the ilo governing body, or of the delegates and technical advisors sent by individual nations to the yearly ilo conferences. Yet this edited collection of fourteen essays makes a convincing case that women have played an important role in shaping the ilo's policies toward women workers and in ensuring the ratification and implementation of ilo conventions governing women's work in diverse national contexts. The book is divided into two overlapping sections. The first section primarily considers the role of transnational women's networks in shaping debates and policies within the ilo; the second focuses on the ways in which ilo standards were negotiated and implemented within particular nations, regions, and populations of workers. In an important opening chapter of the first section, Dorothy Sue Cobble explores the neglected role of women in the "origin story" of the ilo. (27) The blueprints for the ilo were first drawn up by the all-male Commission on International Labour Legislation at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. Fearful of the growing contagion of Bolshevism and other forms of labour radicalism in the aftermath of World War I, they recommended an innovative tripartite structure for the ilo: the yearly conferences would include national delegations of government, business, and labour representatives, and the governing body would also include representatives from all three groups. These groups were charged with working together to raise labour standards in order to prevent the injustices and poverty that caused social unrest and threatened world peace. A coalition of women's groups visited the commission to voice their concerns and several women's organizations asked that representation for women also be mandated as a component of the tripartite structure of the ilo. Instead, the Commission required only that the ilo's director appoint women to the ilo staff and recommended that national delegations include at least one woman in an advisory position. Of the 40 nations that sent delegations to the founding convention of the ilo in Washington, DC in the autumn of 1919, none appointed a woman as a voting delegate and most included only a few female advisors. The US and British-based Women's Trade Union League, however, responded by staging their own International Congress of Working Women (icww) in Washington, DC at the same time as the ilo convention. Their meeting included over two hundred women from nineteen nations, some of whom were also advisors to their national delegations at the ilo convention. The icww prepared a set of resolutions and policy statements that were then championed by the women advisors at the ilo meeting. The icww recommendations proved particularly important in shaping the ilo's Maternity Convention [End Page 302] to include a far-reaching demand for six weeks paid benefits for women before and after childbirth. icww proposals were also taken into consideration in debates over conventions on child labour and the prohibition of night work for women. Subsequent articles by Françoise Thébaud, Kirsten Scheiwe, and Lucia Artner highlight the way women continued to influence debates over labour standards for women during the interwar period through the no's Correspondence Committee on Women's Work and its dedicated staff members. The Cold War, as Eileen Boris demonstrates, complicated the quest for international labour standards as the no's protective legislation for women came under attack by feminist activists from Communist bloc countries as well as legal equality feminists based in the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Silke Neunsinger...

Securing harmonious interactions among parties in work atmosphere seems a wish rather than reality. So far, attempts of investigators remained vague and inconclusive, so there is room for more research. The title of this enquiry is “international labour standards and industrial relations practice among selected banks in Lagos State, Nigeria.” Two cardinal variables are involved, independent variable (international labour standards) and dependent variable (industrial relations practice) The study successfully collected 390 copies of administered questionnaire using exploratory survey involving cross sectional method and multistage sampling technique. The findings in Hypothesis one indicated no significant relationship between labour standards on trade unions and labour unions activities in the selected banks with a significant value (sig, 2tailed) 0.150 higher than p-value 0.05 Hypothesis 2 revealed no significant relationship between ILO Convention on collective bargaining and salaries/wages of workers with significant value (sig.2 tailed)0.064 higher than p-value 0.05 Hypothesis 3 showed a significant relationship between labour standards on occupational safety/health and the health/safety practice with significant value (sig.2tailed) /0001less than p-value 0.05 Hypothesis 4 indicated no significant relationship between ILO standards on employment policy and employment security with significant value (sig,2 tailed.) 0.337 higher than p-value 0.05. To satisfy ILO standards in industrial relations practice, the study, therefore, recommended that employers of labour in the banking sector should embrace, trade unionism, collective bargaining, and good employment policy for high productivity to be attained always.

This book deals with international labor and employment law in the East Asia Region (EA), particularly dealing with China, South Korea and Japan. It explores and explains the effects of globalization and discusses the role played by international labor law as it affects lawyers, business, labor, labor unions and human resource management, and the labor issues that can arise in dealing in EA trade and investment. The text, and the readings (from area experts), are organized and written to provide the reader with, first, a broad understanding and insight into the global dimensions of the fast-emerging area of labor and employment issues (e.g., global legal standards and their interplay with domestic and foreign laws); and second, to show how these laws and approaches play out in specific EA countries (comparing global approaches with the specific laws of each country on four common agenda items: regulatory administration, workers' rights, trade unions and dispute resolution).

[C]oming out of nowhere, international labor law has grabbed the attention of globalizing multinationals, the international labor movement, activists, newspapers, governments, and non-governmental diplomatic organizations (NGOs) the world over. In the process, international employment law morphed from an arcane backwater into a tinderbox that (quite literally) ignites violence in the world's streets. Today, it is little wonder that the outlook is indeed rosy for international employment law practitioners. Donald C. Dowling, Jr., The Practice of International Labor and Employment Law: Escort your Labor/Employment Clients into the Global Millennium , 17 L ab . L aw . 1, 3 (2001). INTRODUCTION Imagine that you are an employment lawyer whose firm represents transnational corporations. Your client, a U.S. manufacturer of medical devices, plans to issue stock options to its executives. In return for the options, the client wants executives located in twenty-two national jurisdictions to sign covenants not to compete that will prevent them from working for the client's competitors for a certain period of time after their departure from the company. Think about the ways in which this assignment is challenging. Noncompete agreements are devices increasingly used domestically by U.S. employers to prevent former employees from using the human capital they develop on the job on behalf of a competitor. In the United States, employers sometimes enforce these agreements by filing suit seeking to enjoin the postemployment activities of former employees.

Abstract.Far from competing against one another, the national and international systems of labour regulation are interlocked. ILO standards have been used in recent rulings by the highest jurisdictions of some countries. Examining two decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada and another by the Paris Court of Appeal, the authors clarify the circumstances in which national courts make use of these international sources of law and consequent legal implications. The cases involve proceedings before national courts and ILO bodies, and France and Canada also have different legal cultures, enabling a discussion of how national jurisdictions actually appropriate international labour standards.

Rethinking Global Labor Standards:Controversies, Constraints, and Possibilities James Heintz (bio) Most people worldwide rely on their own labor to generate income for themselves and their families. Employment is central to our economic survival. However, simply having access to employment is not enough. The quality of employment varies enormously, both within and across countries, and there is no guarantee that paid employment will generate sufficient income to meet basic needs, provide adequate savings for unforeseen emergencies, and sustain the material and emotional well-being of working people. Labor standards have been used to set basic benchmarks of decency: protecting the rights of workers and defining the conditions under which labor can be exchanged. However, as developing countries continue to become increasingly integrated into the world economy, the relevance of labor standards for many of the world's low-income workers has been called into question—do labor standards actually help vulnerable workers and, if not, might they do more harm than good? This paper argues that labor standards—as they have been traditionally conceived and implemented—may be increasingly limited in their ability to protect working people. Specifically, old models—in which national governments regulate formal, wage employment for their citizens—are insufficient and may be biased against vulnerable groups, including women working in informal employment. This is not to say that labor standards, broadly defined, are irrelevant. Indeed, social protections for workers may be more relevant today than in the past in order to check the imbalances introduced by global market forces, which often work to the disadvantage of labor. However, the thinking around global labor standards needs to be transformed if interventions to improve the quality of employment are to stand a chance. Labor Standards and Employment: The Debate Are better labor standards good for working people? This controversial question lies at the heart of much heated debate around global labor standards. At first, the answer may appear trivial—regulatory interventions which improve working conditions should also improve the welfare of working people. Moreover, if labor standards are appropriately designed to target the most vulnerable segments of the labor market, including women workers, labor standards should also reduce poverty and mitigate inequalities. However, the issue is more complex and hinges on the possibility of unintended consequences. If labor standards reduce the number of available employment opportunities, then the welfare impacts become more ambiguous. In developing countries with weak social safety nets, a bad job may be better than no job.1 Opponents of the idea of global labor standards often draw on international trade theory to make their point. The argument goes as follows. Developing countries have an abundance of low-wage labor, but a shortage of other factors of production, such as capital equipment or a technologically savvy workforce. Their competitive advantage therefore lies in low-wage production. In this context, global standards compromise the competitive position of developing countries with an abundance of low-skill, low-wage labor.2 Moreover, such protections shield workers in more affluent economies from global competition. The end result will be more protected jobs in rich nations and fewer economic opportunities in poor countries. A similar set of arguments against labor protections are based on the premise that labor markets are generally efficient and maximize total welfare within an economy. In an ideal world with perfectly functioning markets, global labor standards become inefficient regulatory distortions in which the gains in terms of better jobs are more than off-set by lower levels of employment.3 However, this efficiency argument depends on the existence of a seamless link between price adjustments and the allocation of productive resources in which unemployment only occurs when regulators tamper with the market mechanism. The introduction of market imperfections, externalities, or transactions costs fundamentally changes this picture. Although the assumptions and theoretical details of these economic models are open to question, the more general point is relevant. As production and supply networks become increasingly integrated and competitive pressures intensify, employment will generally become more sensitive to changes in the cost of production.4 Meaningful improvements in working conditions—in terms of better wages, safer workplaces, and basic social protections—generally translate into higher costs. The risk is...

The International Labor Organization (ILO) labor standard is crucial for ensuring labor rights, making it imperative for member states to adopt labor policies that align with and comply with the ILO. With this in mind, this manuscript addresses three key questions: First, what does the term ‘labor standard’ mean under the ILO? Second, does Bangladesh’s labor policy align with the ILO? Third, how can compliance with labor policy be improved to safeguard labor rights in Bangladesh? This qualitative study employs an interdisciplinary pure legal research methodology, as established by Arthurs in 1983, within the academic constituency. The findings reveal that labor legislation in Bangladesh often deviates from the ILO labor policy. In many cases, there is a lack of effective inspection mechanisms to enforce labor laws, and the penalties, incarceration, and other sanctions for labor law violations are inadequate. This leads to insufficient implementation of the law in Bangladesh, resulting in numerous violations of workers’ rights.

This article examines labor standards, policies, and compliance mechanisms in Pakistan, focusing on the textile industry, a critical economic sector. Utilizing the International Labor Organization (ILO) framework, it assesses the alignment of Pakistan’s labor policies with international standards and investigates enforcement challenges through a qualitative case study of the 2012 Ali Enterprises factory fire in Karachi. The study addresses three questions: (1) What are labor standards under the ILO? (2) Does Pakistan’s labor policy align with ILO standards? (3) How can compliance be improved to protect workers’ rights? By integrating theoretical frameworks, empirical data, and visual aids, the article proposes strategies to enhance compliance and safeguard labor rights, emphasizing systemic reforms in Pakistan’s labor governance. Additionally, it explores theoretical implications for compliance theory, contributing to academic discourse on labor regulation.