The International Labour Organisation: Origins and Evolution

Abstract

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...