Editorial: The ILO is one hundred years old, but what is its future?

Abstract

2 | International Union Rights | 26/2 EDITORIAL Editorial: the ILO is one hundred years old, but what is its future? A new Declaration has emerged from the centenary conference, described as ‘a reaffirmation of the relevance and importance of the ILO’s mandate in the changing world of work, a strong statement of intent, a mobilizing call, and a road map for action’. But while these seem laudible objectives, the new language elevates the private sector (‘a principal source of economic growth and job creation’) and subtly downplays the public sector (not a ‘principal’ anything, but merely ‘a significant employer and provider of quality public services’). More worrying still is the position of core workers’ rights as mere means to economic ends (the ILO, we are told, will devote its efforts towards ‘workers rights as a key element for the attainment of inclusive and sustainable growth’. This is the new document’s sole reference to freedom of association – justified only as a means to attain growth! How different things were at the ILO’s founding in 1919, when the ‘principle’ of freedom of association was ‘urgently required’ to address ‘injustice, hardship and privation to large numbers of people’, and to prevent ‘unrest so great that the peace and harmony of the world are imperilled’… It is with these concerns about the ILO’s direction and purpose that the latest edition of IUR takes on the challenge of the ILO centenary. Several of our contributors take us back to the early years of the ILO’s work, the context of its establishment, the ideas that fed its early work, the opening of the Organisation’s working model to embrace development, and the underpinnings of the technical assistance programmes. Plata-Stenger and Fitti Sinclair talk us through the ideas underlying ILO’s work in these areas from the outset through to contemporary ILO projects, while the ILO’s Azzi shares with us an inside insight into the changing work on the Organisation in its approach to health and safety at work. Some may question whether the business-friendly language of the new Declaration is really a sufficient answer to PSI’s ringing challenge posed earlier this year (reproduced as our opening article), and Hochscheidt and Vollmann note with concern that ILO’s new private sector partnerships create a perception of the conflict of interest. For ICTUR, standards and supervision have always been the core focus of our engagement with the Organisation. Tonia Novitz discusses the explosion in the late 20th Century of the use of ILO principles in courts around the world seeking to align local and regional human rights decision-making in those courts with the global principles that the ILO has established. And standard setting continues, as Amanda Brown reminds us, in a process based ultimately not on enforcement and sanction, but on consensus and encouragement: during the centenary conference a new convention on violence and harassment was adopted. Burns and Logan look at what the ILO has meant in a local context, from the Australian and US perspectives. A central concern for both contributors is with ILO standards and their application to the domestic trade union rights agenda. While there is much to celebrate with respect to the ILO’s standards machinery, this edition of IUR seeks also to remind our readers that there have been astonishing omissions from the Organisation’s work: where was the Commission of Inquiry on Colombia in the early 2000s; what did the Organisation do to protest the mass killing of striking oil workers in Kazakhstan in 2011; and why, with respect to South Africa, has the ILO rarely mentioned the massacre of striking mineworkers at Marikana in 2012? This edition of IUR seeks to avoid the cliché, pomp and sycophancy that so often surround any sort of centenary celebration. It was our intention from the outset to produce an edition that would not be shy to point out the Organisation’s flaws and failings. For my part I hope we haven’t overdone that aspect of the project: it was also always our ambition that an overriding admiration should shine through. This journal, and its parent organisation ICTUR, may on occasion be critics...