The Future of the International Labour Question from the Inside Looking Out

Abstract

SENSING THAT A NEW ERA in global history—like it or not—was upon us, we attended tbe June 1993 annual conference of the International Labor Organization (ILO, officially, the 80th session of the International Labor Conference) in Geneva, Switzerland. Aside from the well-documented formal proceedings, these annual gatherings of delegates from 130-plus member countries — each represented by a tripartite delegation of labour, business, and government officials — provide an exceptional forum to assess the state of relations and worker welfare around the world. In addition to die regular delegations, the proximity of the conference to the international offices of the major trade union federations (officially, the International Trade Secretariats, or ITS's), mostly centred in Geneva, offers the student of contemporary affairs an especially rich set of contacts. The atmosphere at the 1993 ILO conference was notable for the air of uncertainty which hung over the proceedings. Uncertainty about the future of the ILO in a post-Cold War world. Uncertainty among northern trade unionists about the strategies for protecting earlier gains amidst a global capitalist shift of investment towards cheaper southern labour. Could a combination of international statutory regulation, trade sanctions, and trans-national solidarity again put a floor under meaningful, minimal labour standards? For the United States' delegates, in particular, the demise of the Communist menace had clearly had a centrifugal impact: business, labour, and governmental voices, once united in an effort to blunt Soviet-bloc mischief' in the convention-setting agenda of the international body, now openly split over the very need for trade unions within the