The
International Labour Organization (ILO) is a
specialized agency of the
United
Nations that deals with
labour issues.
Its headquarters are
in Geneva
, Switzerland
. Its secretariat — the people who are
employed by it throughout the world — is known as the International
Labour Office. The organization received the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1969.
History
E.
Greenwood, US Delegate and Harold B.
Butler, Secretary-General, with secretarial staff of the first
International Labour Conference in Washington, D.C.,
October-November 1919, in front of the Pan American Building.
The ILO was established as an agency of the
League of Nations following the
Treaty of Versailles, which ended
World War I. Post-war reconstruction and
the protection of labour unions occupied the attention of many
nations during and immediately after World War I. In Great Britain,
the
Whitley Commission, a
subcommittee of the Reconstruction Commission, recommended in its
July 1918 Final Report that "industrial councils" be established
throughout the world. The
British
Labour Party had issued its own reconstruction programme in the
document titled
Labour and the New Social Order. In
February 1918, the third
Inter-Allied Labour
and Socialist Conference (representing delegates from Great
Britain, France, Belgium and Italy) issued its report, advocating
an international labour rights body, an end to secret diplomacy,
and other goals. And in December 1918, the
American Federation of Labor
(AFL) issued its own distinctively apolitical report, which called
for the achievement of numerous incremental improvements via the
collective bargaining
process.
As the war drew to a close, two competing visions for the post-war
world emerged.
The first was offered by the International
Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), which called for a meeting
in Berne
in July
1919. The Berne meeting would consider both the future of
the IFTU and the various proposals which had been made in the
previous few years. The IFTU also proposed including delegates from
the
Central Powers as equals.
Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL,
boycotted the meeting, wanting the Central Powers delegates in a
subservient role as an admission of guilt for their countries' role
in the bringing about war. Instead, Gompers favored a meeting in
Paris which would only consider President
Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points as a platform. Despite the
American boycott, the Berne meeting went ahead as scheduled. In its
final report, the Berne Conference demanded an end to wage labour
and the establishment of
socialism. If
these ends could not be immediately achieved, then an international
body attached to the League of Nations should enact and enforce
legislation to protect workers and trade unions.
Meanwhile, the
Paris Peace
Conference sought to dampen public support for
communism. Subsequently, the
Allied Powers agreed that clauses
should be inserted into the emerging peace treaty protecting labour
unions and workers' rights, and that an international labour body
be established to help guide international labour relations in the
future. The advisory Commission on International Labour Legislation
was established by the Peace Conference to draft these proposals.
The Commission met for the first time on 1 February 1919, and
Gompers was elected chairman.
Two competing proposals for an international body emerged during
the Commission's meetings. The British proposed establishing an
international parliament to enact labour laws which each member of
the League would be required to implement. Each nation would have
two delegates to the parliament, one each from labour and
management. An international labour office would collect statistics
on labour issues and enforce the new international laws.
Philosophically opposed to the concept of an international
parliament and convinced that international standards would lower
the few protections achieved in the United States, Gompers proposed
that the international labour body be authorized only to make
recommendations, and that enforcement be left up to the League of
Nations. Despite vigorous opposition from the British, the American
proposal was adopted.
Gompers also set the agenda for the draft charter protecting
workers' rights. The Americans made 10 proposals. Three were
adopted without change: That labour should not be treated as a
commodity; that all workers had the right to a wage sufficient to
live on; and that women should receive equal pay for equal work. A
proposal protecting the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and
association was amended to include only freedom of association. A
proposed ban on the international shipment of goods made by
children under the age of 16 was amended to ban goods made by
children under the age of 14. A proposal to require an eight-hour
work day was amended to require the eight-hour work day
or
the 40-hour work week (an exception was made for countries where
productivity was low). Four other American proposals were rejected.
Meanwhile, international delegates proposed three additional
clauses, which were adopted: One or more days for weekly rest;
equality of laws for foreign workers; and regular and frequent
inspection of factory conditions.
The Commission issued its final report on 4 March 1919, and the
Peace Conference adopted it without amendment on 11 April. The
report became Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles.
The first annual conference (referred to as the
International Labour
Conference, or ILC) began on 29 October 1919 in Washington DC
and adopted the first six International Labour Conventions, which
dealt with hours of work in industry, unemployment, maternity
protection, night work for women, minimum age and night work for
young persons in industry.The prominent French socialist
Albert Thomas became its first Director
General.The ILO became a member of the United Nations system after
the demise of the League in 1946. Its constitution, as amended,
includes the
Declaration of
Philadelphia (1944) on the aims and purposes of the
organisation. , the current director-general is
Juan Somavia (since 1999).
Representation
Unlike other United Nations specialised agencies, the International
Labour Organization has a tripartite governing structure —
representing governments, employers and workers
[2011].
Governing body
The Governing Body is the executive of the International Labour
Office. It meets three times a year, in March, June and November.
It takes decisions on ILO policy, decides the agenda of the
International Labour Conference, adopts the draft programme and
budget of the organisation for submission to the conference, and
elects the director-general.
The Governing Body is composed of 28 government representatives, 14
workers' group representatives, and 14 employers' group
representatives.Ten of the government seats are held permanently by
Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Russian
Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The
remaining government representatives are elected by government
delegates every three years.
International Labour Conference
The ILO organises the
International Labour
Conference in Geneva every year in June, where conventions and
recommendations are crafted and adopted. The conference also makes
decisions on the ILO's general policy, work programme and
budget.
Each member state is represented at the conference by four people:
two government delegates, an employer delegate and a worker
delegate. All of them have individual voting rights, and all votes
are equal, regardless of the population of the delegate's member
state. The employer and worker delegates are normally chosen in
agreement with the "most representative" national organizations of
employers and workers. Usually, the workers' delegates coordinate
their voting, as do the employers' delegates.
International Labour Code
One of the principal functions of the ILO is setting
international labour
standards through the adoption of conventions and
recommendations covering a broad spectrum of labour-related
subjects and which, together, are sometimes referred to as the
International Labour Code. The topics covered include a wide range
of issues, from freedom of association to health and safety at
work, working conditions in the maritime sector, night work,
discrimination, child labour, and forced labour. The term "code" is
somewhat a misnomer insofar as adoption of new standards and
revision of old ones has not resulted in an entirely integrated and
homogeneous body of law. This is not the case. Nevertheless, the
broad scope of the subjects covered by the ILO's standards suggests
that the term "code" would be appropriate to use.
Conventions
Adoption
Adoption of a convention by the International Labour Conference
allows governments to ratify it, and the convention then becomes a
treaty in international law when a specified number of governments
have done so. But all adopted ILO conventions are considered
international labour standards regardless of how many governments
have ratified them.
Ratification
The coming into force of a convention results in a legal obligation
to apply its provisions by the nations that have ratified it.
Ratification of a convention is voluntary. Conventions that have
not been ratified by member states have the same legal force as do
recommendations. Governments are required to submit reports
detailing their compliance with the obligations of the conventions
they have ratified. Every year the International Labour
Conference's Committee on the Application of Standards examines a
number of alleged breaches of international labour standards.
In recent
years, one of the member states that has received the most
attention is Myanmar
/ Burma
, as the
country has repeatedly been criticised for its failure to protect
its citizens against forced labour exacted by the
army.
1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at
Work
In 1998 the 86th International Labour Conference adopted the
Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.
This declaration identified four "principles" as "core" or
"fundamental", asserting that all ILO member States on the basis of
existing obligations as members in the Organization have an
obligation to work towards fully respecting the principles embodied
in the relevant (ratifiable) ILO Conventions. The fundamental
rights concern freedom of association and collective bargaining,
discrimination, forced labour, and child labour. The ILO
Conventions which embody the fundamental principles have now been
ratified by the overwhelming majority of ILO member states, not
least because of the declaration's denomination of the principles
they contain as "fundamental".
Criticism of the establishment of core or fundamental labour
standards
Despite the rapid ratification by many countries of the eight
conventions whose principles have been identified as fundamental, a
number of academics and activists have criticised the ILO for
creating a "false division" between different international labour
standards, many of which cover specific and concrete human rights
topics but were excluded from the 1998 declaration, such as those
on health and safety and working hours. To add further confusion,
the new core conventions are often exclusively referred to as being
human rights, whereas before all international labour standards
were viewed as human rights. Philip Alston, John Norton Pomeroy
Professor of Law at New York University, has written on this
"narrowing" of international labour standards in the name of human
rights advocacy.
This criticism must however be seen in the light of the historical
background of the declaration and the ten year period leading up to
its adoption. For many years, the Governing Body of the ILO had
categorized the body of international labour standard conventions
and recommendations. This categorization was largely—and continues
largely to be—of a technical nature, rather than a prioritization,
i.e. some standards are more important than others. With the fall
of the communism in the late 1980s perception of a need to
prioritize standards grew, the view in some groups being that
globalization would truly put pressure on real labour standards and
the Organization truly needed now to take its mandate to improve
them to heart. The view was held also in the light of the patchy
ratification of some standards' areas; although there were
significant numbers of ratifications, there were also many ILO
conventions which did not attract large numbers of ratifications,
and these included instruments that many would see to be of very
great importance. The drive to come to a consensus on what the high
priority standards would be, how they would be enunciated as such,
and what mechanisms would be used to either enforce or promote them
was a difficult one within the ILO, with workers', employers' and
government groups taking different positions.
These views were debated in the work of the ILO's Governing Body on
the Social Dimensions of International Trade (latter called the
Working Party on the Social Dimensions of Globalization) during the
period. There were also significant splits along developing and
industrialized country lines. The significant first important
consensus was reflected in the UN's World Social Summit held in
Copenhagen in March, 1995. Commitment 3(i) of the closing
Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development, Part C: Commitments,
identified the 4 subject areas that were to be repeated in 1998
inside the ILO's Declaration. It is in this context that the
criticism of the ILO Declaration has to be assessed. In the event,
there is now almost universal ratification of the relevant 8 ILO
Conventions, thereby bringing regular international supervision to
bear on their implementation. Importantly, a number of important
countries—in terms of economic strength and sizable working
populations—continue to be non-ratifiers of important conventions.
An important question applies to them in terms of the obligations
under the declaration.
Recommendations
Recommendations do not have the binding force of conventions and
are not subject to ratification by member countries.
Recommendations may be adopted at the same time as conventions to
supplement the latter with additional or more detailed provisions.
In other cases recommendations may be adopted separately and may
address issues not covered by, or unrelated to any particular
convention.
Child labour
The term "child labour" is often defined as work that deprives
children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and
that is harmful to physical and mental development.
It refers to work that:
- is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and
harmful to children; and
- interferes with their schooling by:
- depriving them of the opportunity to attend school;
- obliging them to leave school prematurely; or
- requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with
excessively long and heavy work.
In its most extreme forms, child labour involves children being
enslaved, separated from their families, exposed to serious hazards
and illnesses and/or left to fend for themselves on the streets of
large cities – often at a very early age. Whether or not particular
forms of "work" can be called "child labour" depends on the child's
age, the type and hours of work performed, the conditions under
which it is performed and the objectives pursued by individual
countries. The answer varies from country to country, as well as
among sectors within countries.
Not all work done by children should be classified as child labour
that is to be targeted for elimination. Children’s or adolescents’
participation in work that does not affect their health and
personal development or interfere with their schooling, is
generally regarded as being something positive. This includes
activities such as helping their parents around the home, assisting
in a family business or earning pocket money outside school hours
and during school holidays. These kinds of activities contribute to
children’s development and to the welfare of their families; they
provide them with skills and experience, and help to prepare them
to be productive members of society during their adult life.
ILO’s response to child labour
The
ILO’s
International
Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) was created
in 1992 with the overall goal of the progressive elimination of
child labour, which was to be achieved through strengthening the
capacity of countries to deal with the problem and promoting a
worldwide movement to combat child labour. IPEC currently has
operations in 88 countries, with an annual expenditure on technical
cooperation projects that reached over US$74 million in 2006. It is
the largest programme of its kind globally and the biggest single
operational programme of the ILO.
The number and range of IPEC’s partners have expanded over the
years and now include employers’ and workers’ organizations, other
international and government agencies, private businesses,
community-based organizations, NGOs, the media, parliamentarians,
the judiciary, universities, religious groups and, of course,
children and their families.
IPEC's work to eliminate child labour is an important facet of the
ILO's Decent Work Agenda.
[2012] Child labour not only prevents children
from acquiring the skills and education they need for a better
future, it also perpetuates poverty and affects national economies
through losses in competitiveness, productivity and potential
income. Withdrawing children from child labour, providing them with
education and assisting their families with training and employment
opportunities contribute directly to creating decent work for
adults.
Forced labour
In June 1998 the International Labour Conference adopted a
Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its
Follow-up that obligates member States to respect, promote and
realize freedom of association and the right to collective
bargaining, the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory
labour, the effective abolition of child labour, and the
elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and
occupation.
With the adoption of the Declaration, the ILO created the InFocus
Programme on Promoting the Declaration which is responsible for the
reporting processes and technical cooperation activities associated
with the Declaration; and it carries out awareness raising,
advocacy and knowledge functions.
In November 2001, following the publication of the InFocus
Programme's first Global Report on
forced
labour, the ILO Governing Body created a Special Action
Programme to Combat Forced Labour (SAP-FL), as part of broader
efforts to promote the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles
and Rights at Work and its Follow-up.
Since its inception, SAP-FL has focused on raising global awareness
of forced labour in its different forms, and mobilising action
against its manifestation. Several thematic and country-specific
studies and surveys have since been undertaken, on such diverse
aspects of forced labour as bonded labour, human trafficking,
forced domestic work, rural servitude, and forced prison
labour.
HIV/AIDS
Under the name ILOAIDS, the ILO created the
Code of Practice on
HIV/AIDS and the World of Work as a document providing
principles for "policy development and practical guidelines for
programmes at enterprise, community, and national levels."
Including:
- prevention of HIV
- management and mitigation of the impact of AIDS on the world of
work
- care and support of workers infected and affected by
HIV/AIDS
- elimination of stigma and discrimination on the basis of real
or perceived HIV status.
Indigenous peoples
ILO-Convention 169 concerns
indigenous and
tribal peoples in independent countries. It was
adopted on 27 June 1989 by the General Conference of the ILO at its
76th session. Its entry into force was 5 September 1991.
[2013][2014]
Membership
Membership is limited to
nation-states, including all who were members
on 1 November 1945, when the organisation's new constitution came
into effect. In addition, any original member of the United Nations
and any state admitted thereafter may also join. Other states can
be admitted by a super-majority vote of any ILO General Conference.
ILO Constitution
There are 182 members of the ILO.
See also
References
- Haimson, Leopold H. and Sapelli, Giulio. Strikes, Social
Conflict, and the First World War: An International
Perspective. Milan: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 1992.
ISBN 8807990474
- Shapiro, Stanley. "The Passage of Power: Labor and the New
Social Order." Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society. 120:6 (29 December 1976).
- Ayusawa, Iwao
Frederick. International Labor Legislation. Clark,
N.J.: Lawbook Exchange, 2005. ISBN 1584774614
- Foner, Philip S. History of the Labor Movement in the
United States. Vol. 7: Labor and World War I, 1914-1918. New
York: International Publishers, 1987. ISBN 0717806383
- http://www.ilo.org/public/english/about/history.htm
- See Article 7 of the ILO's constitution at
http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/english/constq.htm.
- See the list of ratifications at
http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/english/docs/declworld.htm
Links to the official ILO Web site
Other links
The ILO 90th Anniversary is in a Global
Website:www.ilo.org/90
Top topics
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Search
