Nevertheless, areas of contention still existed within the movement, especially concerning the role that should be attributed to the different stakeholders. This Declaration embodies the balanced approach that has resonated beyond our Organization and encapsulates the contribution we can make to meet the growing demand for an architecture of global fairness based on decent work. (PDF) The International Labour Organization and Globalization Global Report under the follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. That ILO and the G20; The ILO and the G7 ; The ILO and the BRICS; Unites Nations Reform; Partnering for Development . In addition, a number of US participants played a major role at the time of the creation of the Organization. Un agenda social pour le multilatralisme (Paris: LHarmattan). From the beginning of 1920, at their second meeting, the members of the ILOs Governing Body raised the possibility of conducting an inquiry into the situation in Soviet Russia (ILO, 1920), for the stated purpose of disarming the upsurge of revolution by putting an end to the illusions of the workers (ABIT, 1921). It helps to tilt the balance of power in favour of the workers and ensure that their social situation is not systematically indexed to the economic results achieved by the company. Van Daele, J., M. Rodriguez Garcia, G. van Goethem and M. van der Linden (eds.) 30-35. As we mark the 90th anniversary of the ILO, the Organizations values and mandate endure. Finally, I will explore the solutions implemented by the ILO during its first fifty years of existence to work towards a fair globalisation for workers. 1999 [118] 2008 [68] International Labour Organization (ILO): Home Work Convention (No. ), Governing Migration for Development from the Global Souths, African Cities and the Development Conundrum, Alternative Pathways to Sustainable Development, Sustainable Food Consumption, Urban Waste Management and Civic Activism, Combining Economic and Political Development, Aid, Emerging Economies and Global Policies, Dossier | Africa: 50 years of independence Review | Major development policy trends, A digital resources portal for the humanities and social sciences, Organisation internationale du travail (OIT), 2. The ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization (see section 3 below), adopted by governments, workers and employers in June 2008, is designed to strengthen the ILO's capacity to promote the Decent Work Agenda and to forge an effective response to the increasingly significant challenges of globalization. Furthermore, the ILO continued to carry out important normative work, but activities to encourage economic development took precedence over other areas as shown by the rising number of economists among the staff and the recruitment of many development economists as external experts. Convention 102 proposed an la carte solution allowing the least developed countries to select the branches of social security they wished to include first in their systems. The International Labour Organization unanimously adopted the ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization on 10 June 2008. This first convention was symbolic, since the eight-hour day lay at the heart of the demands of the worldwide workers movement but it was not ratified by any of the major industrial countries despite the efforts of Albert Thomas. Workers are a commodity in my country. In reality, the activities of the ILO and the adoption of its conventions have always been very dependent on the commitment of governments and the various national participants. 1 See the website http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/history/lang--en/index.htm (accessed on 17 July 2018). The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Origins, vol. 2 The USSR initially joined the ILO in 1934 and left in 1940. 15The ILO tackled the issue of labour as a commodity as early as 1920, in the context of its normative work on fixing a minimum wageone of the general principles expressed in its Constitution. ILO (1920) Procs Verbal du Conseil dadministration (PV CA), No. Social Justice at the Heart of the ILOs Mission, http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/history/lang--en/index.htm, http://www.ilo.ch/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:62:0::NO, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.15767/feministstudies.40.2.411, http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/future-of-work/lang--fr/index.htm, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/fr/f?p=1000:12000:6220762689995::::P12000_INSTRUMENT_SORT:4, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/partxiii.asp, http://www.ilo.ch/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:62:0::NO:62:P62_LIST_ENTRIE_ID:2453907:NO, Annuaire suisse de politique de dveloppement|Schweizerisches Jahrbuch fr Entwicklungspolitik, Catalogue of 614 journals. The main task of the Committee on International Labour Legislation, meeting in Paris between January and April 1919, was to define the modalities for the creation of such a code. 26Thus the productivist turn of the 1950s stood in conflict with the values on which the Organization was based in two ways: it ran against the idea that the social sphere had to prevail over the economic, and it questioned the liberal conception of trade unions on which it was grounded. Moynihan, D.P. PDF CONCLUSIONS The Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization Since the publication of the encyclical Rerum novarum in 1891, the social doctrine of the Catholic Church had clearly been based on a demand for justice, taken up and amplified by the Catholic and Christian workers movement (Pasture and Govaert, 1999). ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization, Collective bargaining and labour relations, Employment injury insurance and protection, Forced labour, human trafficking and slavery, Agriculture; plantations;other rural sectors, Financial services; professional services, Shipping; ports; fisheries; inland waterways, Transport (including civil aviation; railways; road transport), ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work, 2019, ILC 2016 Committee for the Social Justice Declaration Setting the stage (30 May 2016), Presentation given at the briefing session on 18 March 2015, Resolutions adopted by the International Labour Conference at its 97th Session, Implementation plan: ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization, Report of the Steering Group on the Follow-up to the Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization - Oral report by the Chairperson of the Steering Group, Progress report on the implementation plan on the follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization, Other sources of information for the Office report submitted to the 2016 Conference, Resolution adopted at the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly on "ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization", ILO adopts landmark Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization. 5The founding principles of the ILO were formulated in 1919 and have remained the same. For their part, development policies have always subordinated social progress to economic performance and emphasised the notions of growth, productivity and consumptioneven those that have been supported by progressive schools of thought, such as the World Employment Programme.Last but not least, the ILO has always worked within a constrained space: constrained by national governments, constrained by the diverging interests of workers and employers, and constrained by the international system itself, in which the place occupied by the Organization has always been contested. 127-155, DOI:10.3917/lci.002.0127. Country data and ILO results; Africa; Americas; Arab States; Asia and the Pacific; . This policy, which made social progress dependent on the results of the capitalist economy, soon met resistance from some employers, who refused to increase wages, as well as from unions, which feared a rise in unemployment (Cayet, 2010). In addition, the Health Section of the League of Nations competed with certain sectors of the Organizations activities, relying on Rockefeller Foundation money, which was less accessible to the ILO. 25The productivist approach chosen by the ILO clearly established the primacy of the economic sphere over the social, but the Organization simultaneously reaffirmed its social goals within this economic framework. Maupain, F. (2010) Une Rolls Royce en mal de rvision? (2008) The International Labour Organization (ILO) in Past and Present Research, International Review of Social History, 53(3), pp. In the 1970s, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) took over a large share of the ILOs development activities in industrialised countries, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) took over a number of its training capacities. On the occasion of the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2023, the ILO's Director-General, Gilbert F. Houngbo states that 'a rapid recovery is only possible if sound foundations, built on decent work and social justice, are laid now as an essential precondition for peace.' Then, starting from the formula with which the Declaration of Philadelphia beginslabour is not a commodityI will examine the tensions created within the Organization by the contradiction between the social objectives that it is supposed to promote and the conditions for their realisation in an open capitalist economy. The words "the ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization (2008), as amended in 2022" shall be substituted for the words "the ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization, 2008," or any variant contained in the Preamble of the Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. In general, the normative activity of the ILO has always been built on the idea that the conventional system, by placing workers under the protection of a political authority, constitutes a powerful tool for the decommodification of labour. Peter Lang). Follow-up activities for Seoul Declaration . (2008) Rguler la mondialisation: Albert Thomas, les dbuts du BIT et la crise conomique mondiale de 1920-1923, Les cahiers Irice, No. In the 1990s, tripartism even entered the International Labour Office with the creation of offices of the Bureau for Workers Activities (ACTRAV) and the Bureau for Employers Activities (ACTEMP). Regulation of the hours of work including the establishment of a maximum working day and week; Regulation of labour supply, prevention of unemployment and provision of an adequate living wage; Protection of the worker against sickness, disease and injury arising out of his employment; Protection of children, young persons and women; Provision for old age and injury, protection of the interests of workers when employed in countries other than their own; Recognition of the principle of equal remuneration for work of equal value; Recognition of the principle of freedom of association; Organization of vocational and technical education and other measures. The International Labour Organization (ILO) created the Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization (2008) to advocate "decent work" policies in response to the increasingly precarious nature of labour in the globalized economy. This perspective lies behind the actual creation of the Organization, and behind the measures implemented to accomplish its mission and the tensions and limits on its actions (International Labour Office, 1931, 1516). 1996 [69] . This criticism was recently taken up by Guy Standingan official in the ILO from 1975 to 2006but from another point of view: Depicted as reducing the commodity character of labour, the conventions actually helped to legitimise and spread fictitious decommodification: they made the activity of labour less like a commodity but fostered national systems in which workers entitlements were increasingly dependent on the performance of labour and being in stable wage labour. 64-65. 24As part of this policy in favour of economic development, the ILO set up and implemented productivity missions, the first of which was sent to Israel in 1952, one year before the activities of the European Productivity Agency (EPA) beganan agency placed under the authority of the European Organization for Economic Co-operation as part of the Marshall Plan. Zimmermann, S. (2010) Special Circumstances in Geneva: The ILO and the World of Non-Metropolitan Labour in the Interwar Period, in J. This Declaration embodies the balanced approach that has resonated beyond our Organization and encapsulates the contribution we can make to meet the growing demand for an architecture of global fairness based on decent work. Gerry, R., E. Lee, L. Swepston and J. Tripartism stands in contradiction with the logic of state socialism, which does not distinguish between state and economic stakeholders. World Day of Social Justice | United Nations - But unlike the League, it survived World War II, moving to Montreal in 1941. The Declaration outlined clearly that the two pillars of social protection, mainly (2008) Rguler la mondialisation: Albert Thomas, les dbuts du BIT et la crise conomique mondiale de 1920-1923, Albert Thomas au BIT, 1920-1932: de linternationalisme lEurope. ILO (1957b) Productivity missions to underdeveloped countries, International Labour Review, 76(2). (1997) Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues (New York: Peter Lang). Development of the Seoul Declaration . SECTION II Article 4. It was again under the influence of the United States that the Declaration of Philadelphia, added as an annex to the ILO Constitution after the Second World War, confirmed and hardened this condemnation of labour as a commodity, stating that labour is not a commodity. Bonvin, J.-M. (1998) LOrganisation international du Travail, Etude sur une agence productrice de normes (Paris: PUF), pp. Convention C191 - International Labour Organization The ILOs productivity missions were the global component of the EPAs activities in Western Europe. Pasture, P. and S. Govaert (1999) Histoire du syndicalisme chrtien international: la difficile recherche dune troisime voie (Paris and Montral: Ed. 37Despite their ambiguity and difficulty, the norms remain nevertheless important reference points even when they are not ratified. Standing, G. (2008) The ILO: An Agency of Globalization?, Development and Change, 39(3), pp. ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization - United Nations and the Rule of Law They aimed to empower rather than protect workers (as in the conventions on freedom of association and collective bargaining of 1948). ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work By Juan Somavia, Director-General of the International Labour Office. Collective bargaining and labour relations, Employment injury insurance and protection, Forced labour, human trafficking and slavery, Agriculture; plantations;other rural sectors, Financial services; professional services, Shipping; ports; fisheries; inland waterways, Transport (including civil aviation; railways; road transport). The Italian and French representatives proposed that the International Labour Conferencethe parliament of the future Organizationbe able to adopt conventions that would be automatically binding on the member states; the British, for their part, favoured an almost automatic ratification system. This freedom of association, stated in the preamble to the 1919 Constitution, is therefore essential to the very functioning of the ILO. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press). 465-499. The 1948 Convention on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise is a foundational Fundamental Convention of the ILO and, since 1951, its enforcement has been under a specific supervisory committeethe Committee on Freedom of Association. Leffler and O.A. Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), regarded this article as the Magna Carta of the workers and regretted that the term merely had been added in the ILO text. Tripartism is consistent with a liberal reformist vision that seeks to correct the asymmetric power relations between workers and employers intrinsic to the employment contract through the organisation of collective bargaining. The aim of the follow-up is to encourage the efforts made by the Members of the Organization to promote the fundamental principles and rights enshrined in the Constitution of the ILO and the Declaration of Philadelphia and reaffirmed in the 1998 Declaration. PDF ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization It traces the reaction to the continued use of child and forced labour, discrimination and denial of trade union rights. 7The ILOs normative activities thus originally aimed to achieve these different objectives (Bonvin, 1998) in the form of a sort of international labour code, inspired by the legislation implemented in the most socially advanced nations. Van Daele, M. Rodriguez Garcia, G. van Goethem and M. van der Linden (eds.) the follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization (2008), as amended in 2022 (Social Justice Declaration) and was taking place eight years after the first recurrent discussion. Although the self-employed have been formally covered by the Declaration of Philadelphia since 1944, workers holding a so-called standard jobthat is to say, wage-earners with an employment contract and protected by social legislationstill remain the main target group of ILO norms. The EPA was created with the aim of increasing productivity in member countries and thus fighting poverty and preventing a revolution from breaking out (Boel, 2003). 3 (Geneva: ILO), p. 6. Feiertag, O. [1] Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is one of the first and oldest specialised agencies of the UN. This tension, already present at the time of the adoption of the very first ILO conventionthe convention on the eight-hour daypartly explains why the ILOs normative system has always been developed under strained conditions. A recurrent discussion on the strategic objective of social protection (social security) under the follow-up to the 2008 ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization. Seeking viable options for responding to increasing pressures to achieve greater diversity, adaptability, and flexibility in working hours and methods while responding to the legitimate demands of individuals and of societies for security, in terms of access to employment, working conditions, pensions and other forms of social protection. 28At the time of its creation, the Organization was well placed to fight for social justice, but in a context of free trade and global economic competition. The need for social justice - International Labour Organization Maupain, F. (2010) Une Rolls Royce en mal de rvision? Louis, M. (2011) LOIT et le travail dcent. ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization - United Alcock, A. It explains the theory of change for development cooperation on fundamental principles and rights at work, milestones and expected results and shares some recent success stories. (1934) The Origins of The International Labour Office, History, vol. This orientation led, for example, to the creation in Geneva in 1927 of the International Management Institute, headed by the Briton Lyndall Urwick. 4152. Collective bargaining and labour relations, Employment injury insurance and protection, Forced labour, human trafficking and slavery, Agriculture; plantations;other rural sectors, Financial services; professional services, Shipping; ports; fisheries; inland waterways, Transport (including civil aviation; railways; road transport), Gender, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Branch (GEDI), ILO adopts landmark Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization. ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization It targets a group largely composed of women and migrants, a group doubly marginalised on the national level and much more dependent than others on international protection. 18From the outset, the communists voiced a more fundamental criticism of the ILO, stating that it contributed to the perpetuation and even the propagation of labour as a commodity by agreeing to improve the capitalist rules of the game. To this end, it worked to disseminate information on the reality of the working-class situation in the USSR. Aglan, A., O. Feiertag and D. Kvonian (2011) Humaniser le travail: rgimes conomiques, rgimes politiques et Organisation internationale du travail, 1929-1969 (Brussels: P.I.E. A History in Tension,International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de dveloppement, 11|2019, 21-39. Lefficacit du systme de supervision de lOIT lapproche de son centenaire, Revue gnrale de droit international public, Histoire du syndicalisme chrtien international: la difficile recherche dune troisime voie.