ILO Observing its Centenary 1919 – 2019: “Advancing Social Justice Promoting Decent Work”

Jan 21, 2019 Features / Columnists, Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
A century ago, the First World War came to an end. It was hoped that the peace which would follow would be a durable peace. The Peace Treaty, signed at Versailles in June 1919, brought into being the League of Nations, whose essential task was to avert future wars.
It was recognised that “universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice”. The International Labour Organisation was accordingly created alongside the League of Nations to promote the economic and social well-being of the world’s peoples.
Thus, it was as a result of the upheavals of the First World War that the efforts of those who had social matters came to fruition. Historically, the founding of the ILO was the outcome of Social thought that had evolved through the 19th century. Social reformers, including trade Unionist, sociologists, industrialists and statesmen, felt that any country or industry introducing better working conditions, and thereby raising the cost of labour, would be at a disadvantage compared with other countries or industries. International Labour Standards began to take shape.
The first concrete result of those early efforts was a fourteen-nation conference held in 1890, which made recommendations on the limitation of child labour, on the employment of women, on mine workers and on weekly rest.
In 1897, another conference met, this time in Brussels, which led to the establishment three years later of the Legal Protection of Workers. This forerunner of the International Labour Organisation undertook the translation and publication of the Labour laws of various countries as they were enacted. The Legislative Series, begun then, was taken over by the ILO, and is still published.
In 1901, the Association set up an international Labour office in Basle. Financed by voluntary contributions and government subsidies, this was a research, information and documentation centre.
A meeting of experts from a score of countries drew up regulations on the prohibition of the use of white phosphorus, a dangerous substance, in the manufacture of matches, and on night work for women. These were adopted in the form of international Conversations during a conference of government representatives held in 1906.
In 1913, another meeting of experts drafted proposals limiting working hours for women and young people and prohibiting night work for children. The World War broke out before the conference which was to embody them in International Conversations could be held.
But the first steps towards co-operation in social matters had been taken, and the war was to provide further impetus. In 1916, an Allied Workers’ Congress called for a trade union voice in the peace talks and asked for the inclusion in the future peace Treaty of clauses to safeguard the national and international rights of workers.
The final motion voted at that Congress demanded that the Treaty guarantee minimum working conditions and establish a permanent body responsible for drawing up and implementing international Labour standards. These ideas were taken up again in 1917 and 1918 at workers’ conferences of trade Unionist from Germany and allies from the neutral States.
Pressure from organised labour before and after the Armistice led the Paris conference of 1919 to take an unprecedented step. At the beginning of its session, it created an International Commission on Labour Legislation composed not only of government delegates, but also of workers’ and employers’ representatives.
This Commission drew up the charter of the permanent organisation called for by the workers. Among its fifteen members were trade union leaders such as Samuel Gompers of the United States, who was elected chairman, and Leon Jouhaux ( a Nobel Peace Prize Winner) of France; leaders of the International Association for the Legal Protection of Workers such as the Governing Body of the International Labour Office, the Belgian jurist Ernest Mahaim, who succeeded Fontaine, and the Briton Malcolm Delevingne; also such statesmen as Belgian socialist leader Emile Vandervelde, British cabinet minister George Barnes and French cabinet minister Louis Loucheur.
The text adopted by the Commission became Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles. The International Labour Organisation was born and, with certain amendments, that text remains to this day its Constitution.
Of all that was created at Versailles, little besides the ILO was to remain after the Second World War. Between the two world wars, the ILO functioned as an autonomous part of the League of Nations. From 1940 to 1946, its headquarters were transferred to Montreal, Canada, where it made plans for the post-war years.
When the International Labour Conference convened in Philadelphia in 1944 for its first regular session in five years, it worked out a new definition of the ILO’s aims and purposes. This statement, known as the Declaration of Philadelphia, was annexed to the ILO Constitution. It adds to the original charter a new and more dynamic concept, that of the ILO’s responsibility in combating poverty and insecurity. It asserts the importance of social objectives in International affairs and proclaims the right of all human being “to pursue both their material well – being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity”.
The United Nations Charter, signed the following year in San Francisco, brought into being the new organisation, whose mission was to safeguard world peace and security. The Charter also called for the establishment of international agencies to work in such specialised fields as education, health, food and agriculture etc. In 1946, the International Labour Organisation became the first of these specialised agencies to be associated with the United Nations.
As the activities of these organisations expanded, close working relationships developed between them in areas of common concern, as for instance technical and vocational training, rural and industrial development, occupational safety and health.
The ILO actively co-operates not only with the United Nations Organisation itself, but also with such agencies as the Food and Agriculture Organisation, UNESCO, the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Within this team of organisations, the ILO is participating in the broad common undertaking of international technical co-operation.
There were 44 ILO members States in 1919, 187 at the beginning of 2019. The rise in membership reflects the broadening of ILO’s activities, which now extend to all parts of the world, in particular to the newly independent nations where development problems are most acute. Setting of international labour standards, technical co-operation, and education, research and information are the three main methods by which the ILO helps its member States.
The 1969 Nobel Peace Prize Award went to the ILO, it is the International activity of the ILO through 50 years that in my opinion makes it a worthy Peace Prize Winner.
Until World War II, ILO concentrated its activities on reducing social barriers between peoples in an effort to make Nations work together in peace. After World War II, ILO had a wider perspective and has become a global institution in the work of peace.
The Organisation is now deeply engaged in the enormous problem of solving unemployment in the poor world combined with the birth explosion. This is a gigantic challenge to the ILO and a task that calls for a concentrated effort of all its talents and powers.
2019 marks the Centenary of the founding of the ILO. It also marks the launching of a major new venture: the Future of Work. This is a vast collective effort directed at assisting countries, especially the less developed ones, in providing their populations with productive work. Here again, as in the past, the ILO’s major concern is with the individual human being, the object and the means of social progress.
If the ILO has been able to weather the political upheavals and economic depressions that have rocked our world since 1919, it is mainly due to the flexibility ensured by its tripartite structure: representatives of governments, workers and employers are free to express their own points of view and to vote accordingly in complete independence. Workers and Employers’ delegates frequently vote against their government’s representatives or against each other. Yet this diversity of viewpoints does not prevent decisions from being adopted by very large majorities or, in many cases, even unanimously.
The tripartite structure enables the ILO to maintain close relations with the driving forces of the world and to come to realistic decisions. The understanding and collaboration that the ILO promotes among these three groups makes it possible for the Organisation not only to establish international labour standards, but also to implement programmes of practical work answering the needs of the various economic and social sectors. This is accomplished in the main by three bodies, which together make up the International Labour Organisation.
Yours faithfully,
Sherwood Clarke
General President
Clerical and Commercial Workers’ Union

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