Social Justice, Neoliberalism, and Labor Standards at the International Labour Organization

Abstract

This chapter examines the clash between neoliberalism and social justice at the International Labour Organization (ILO). Since its founding in 1919, employer, worker and government representatives, as “tripartite” social partners, have created and supervised a wide array of labor standards based on a shared ideology of social justice. In this context, many of its labor standards and monitoring have aimed to shield workers from market forces by, for example, regulating work time and ensuring adequate living wages. These standards fundamentally conflict with the tenets of neoliberalism as it has been increasingly embraced by many of the ILO’s employer and government representatives. The chapter examines three illustrative cases of such conflict: the 1998 initiative to establish Core Labor Standards (CLS), the ongoing conflict at the ILO over the right to strike, and the ILO full employment policy convention. The purpose is to explore whether social justice labor standards are (1) pushed aside (2) remain intact, (3) are flexible enough to accommodate neoliberal interpretations, or (4) unresolved. The results indicate persistent threats and pressures on labor standards from neoliberal labor policy logics. Yet, examination also shows surprising resilience of the ILO’s architecture and values to prevail or at least resist neoliberalism.