International Labor Organization

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International Labor Organization

France 1919

Synopsis

Throughout World War I, the leaders of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) recommended that the international recognition of certain specified labor rights be included in the war aims of the Allied and Associated Powers and as a special clause in the eventual peace treaty. This AFL advocacy contributed to the appointment of a special Commission on International Labor Legislation at the Paris peace conference, of which Samuel Gompers, the AFL president, was elected chairman. Between February and April 1919, this commission drafted a charter of legally enforceable labor rights' principles that incorporated most of the AFL's wartime recommendations. This charter became part of the constitution for the new International Labor Organization (ILO) that the peace conference created as a special agency of the League of Nations under the Treaty of Versailles.

1900: China's Boxer Rebellion, which began in the preceding year with attacks on foreigners and Christians, reaches its height. An international contingent of more than 2,000 men arrives to restore order, but only after several tens of thousands have died.
1907: U.S. markets experience a financial panic.
1912: Titanic sinks on its maiden voyage, from Southampton to New York, on 14 April. More than 1,500 people are killed.
1915: At the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans introduce a new weapon: poison gas.
1917: The intercepted "Zimmermann Telegram" reveals a plot by the German government to draw Mexico into an alliance against the United States in return for a German promise to return the southwestern U.S. territories taken in the Mexican War. Three months later, in response to German threats of unrestricted submarine warfare, the United States on 6 April declares war on Germany.
1919: With the formation of the Third International (Comintern), the Bolshevik government of Russia establishes its control over communist movements worldwide.
1919: The Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibits the production, sale, distribution, purchase, and consumption of alcohol throughout the United States, is ratified.
1919: In India, Mahatma Gandhi launches his campaign of nonviolent resistance to British rule.
1919: In Italy, a former socialist of the left named Benito Mussolini introduces the world to a new socialism of the right, embodied in an organization known as the "Union for Struggle," or Fasci di Combattimento. Composed primarily of young war veterans discontented with Italy's paltry share of the spoils from the recent world war (if not with their country's lackluster military performance in the conflict), the fascists are known for their black shirts and their penchant for violence.
1921: As the Allied Reparations Commission calls for payments of 132 billion gold marks, inflation in Germany begins to climb.
1925: European leaders attempt to secure the peace at the Locarno Conference, which guarantees the boundaries between France and Germany, and Belgium and Germany.
1929: On "Black Friday" in October, prices on the U.S. stock market, which had been climbing wildly for several years, suddenly collapse. Thus begins the first phase of a world economic crisis and depression that will last until the beginning of World War II.

Event and Its Context

Wartime Campaigns for a Labor Clause

The AFL issued three successively more detailed war aims statements during World War I. The last and most complete statement, presented to an Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference in September 1918, became the basis for the Paris peace conference's deliberations on international labor legislation. The statement called upon the international labor movement to endorse the Fourteen Points peace program of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson and proposed the addition of a detailed list of specifically labor-related war aims designed to remove the economic causes of war.

At the top of Gompers's 1918 list was the demand that recognized representatives of labor be allowed to participate in the deliberations of the peace conference. In addition, Gompers proposed the arrangement of a parallel, periodically convened advisory labor conference that would be independent of the political, plenary peace conference. Gompers also called for the establishment of an international association of nations to work for the maintenance of peace not only through the peaceful arbitration of disputes between nation-states but also through removing the social and economic causes of strife. This organization—the League of Nations—would promote the concept that labor should never again be regarded or treated as a commodity. The association would also strive to guarantee essential labor rights, including the eight-hour workday; freedom of speech, of press, and of assembly; trial by jury; the abolition of involuntary servitude; and the right of seamen to disembark when in port. Key among these efforts would be work toward the abolition, as far as was practicable, of all protectionist impediments to international commerce.

The AFL plan was predicated on the pursuit of economic benefits only. The plan aspired to regulate labor conditions on the basis of voluntary labor-employer negotiations that were to be guided by the basic principles incorporated in the peace treaty. The AFL did not aspire to nor approve of the creation of any new national or international structures of legislation or compulsion. This limited vision of international labor legislation was intimately related to Gompers's long-standing fight both against socialist theory and practice and for a type of labor unionism that was conceived in strictly crafts-union and economic terms.

President Woodrow Wilson supported the AFL's antisocialist rationale and endorsed the AFL program on that basis.At the November 1917 AFL convention, Wilson assured the delegates that his peace aims included the advancement of labor rights. Later he included in his drafts for the League of Nations Covenant provisions for the maintenance of fair and humane conditions of labor and for the creation of a new international organization. Wilson, like Gompers, was interested in using such provisions as antisocialist and anticommunist tools, which were as much aimed at strengthening the crafts-unionist AFL against its more radical syndicalist and socialist challengers at home and abroad as they were at the advancement of labor's economic and industrial position. Wilson wanted a social reformist dimension for the projected League of Nations, which he intended after the war to use in the elaboration of his previous social reform legislation. Major liberal and nonrevolutionary socialist politicians and publicists agreed on the necessity of such a League of Nations, and they too tended to give their support to the AFL's plan, even though some of them disagreed with Gompers's overt antisocialism.

The Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference endorsed the AFL plan, but the positions of the AFL and President Wilson differed profoundly from the aspirations of the European protagonists for an international labor agency. Wartime European calls for a peace treaty labor clause were predicated on the pursuit either of an international labor legislature with coercive powers or on the issuance of certain legally binding labor standards that were to be incorporated into national legislation. The Bern Conference of January 1919 formalized recommendations for such a legally binding set of standards and enunciated the goal of an eventual abolition of capitalism. Attendees also proposed, for the meantime, a program considerably more radical than the AFL's. This program included the AFL propositions and such additional demands as guarantees for elementary education, freedom of emigration, unemployment and sickness insurance, and a built-in role or power of veto for the International Federation of Trade Unions in the coming international labor agency.

Wartime debate on the nature of future international labor legislation and organization revolved around the juxtaposition of these two sets of goals, one collectivist and political, the other voluntary and economic. The Bern program provided the blueprint for most of the drafts that British and continental European delegates brought to the Paris Peace Conference, and the Americans remained committed to Gompers's and Wilson's more limited vision.

The Commission on International Labour Legislation

In January 1919 the Paris Peace Conference formed a special Commission on International Labour Legislation. Apart from the Commission on the League of Nations, chaired by President Wilson, the labor commission was the only one of the peace conference's commissions to report directly to the plenary peace conference. Wilson appointed Gompers as the head of the American delegation, and on the suggestion of British delegates, Gompers became the commission chairman. Between 1 February and 28 April 1919, the labor commission debated various European and American drafts for a charter for the new international labour agency and tried to come to an agreement on the guiding principles of the projected organization. These deliberations were marked throughout by a tug of war between the American voluntarist position and the European collectivist position. Agreement eluded the members of the commission until late April, when (in Gompers's absence) Arthur Balfour, former Conservative prime minister of Great Britain, and Sir Robert Borden, prime minister of Canada, served as mediators and drafters of a compromise labor clause.

The structure of the new organization was agreed upon even without Balfour's intervention. This was relatively easy because Gompers had never intended to preside over the creation of a permanent organization and was not particularly interested in its details. He had envisioned periodic labor conferences only but had to acquiesce to European demands for a permanent Labor Office as well. The activities of Gompers and the rest of the American delegation centered therefore on establishing several limits upon the authority of these two dimensions of the new International Labor Organization.

The Americans managed to restrict the permanent Labor Office to the preparation of recommended legislation, the gathering of labor statistics, and the conduct of propaganda for the advancement of labor legislation. For the periodic conferences, they sought to stipulate that only labor and employer representatives could take part in its activities, but in the end they had to settle for a tripartite system of representation in which governments would have two votes and labor and employer delegations one vote each. The conferees agreed that the annual ILO meeting could hear complaints and petitions from labor or employee organizations whenever either one of these felt that non-compliance with a specific ILO recommendation had occurred. In such cases the ILO could remonstrate with a member nation's government and ask for compliance, but it had no powers of coercion. In case of noncompliance, specific labor rights issues could also be referred to the International Court of Justice, another constituent of the League of Nations. On Gompers's insistence, however, it was stipulated that nothing in the ILO's recommendations would be so construed as to challenge recognized hemispheric arrangements such as the Monroe Doctrine or to put into question the supremacy of national constitutions.

The institutional structure of the new organization was thus a compromise between the voluntarist AFL position and the collectivist European position. Hedged with safeguards against central compulsion, in principle it was based on intimate government participation in the regulation of labor and industrial conditions that the AFL had opposed.

Even when the structure of the ILO was agreed upon, it proved exceedingly difficult to fashion the contents of the organization's charter or "General Principles" (Article 427 of the Versailles Treaty). The charter specified the areas in which the Labor Office could propose and the annual ILO conference enact recommendations and conventions for labor legislation. Because these specifications would relate directly to the purposes of the organization, it was a foregone conclusion that they would generate much debate and dissension. Gompers would have preferred simply to issue the AFL list of labor rights and to ask each ILO member to recognize, implement, and maintain them inviolate in their national legislation. The European members of the commission, on the other hand, insisted that national legislatures be obligated legally to incorporate these labor rights. Moreover, the Europeans fought for a broader statement of labor rights that would have included such items from the Bern Conference agenda as unemployment and health insurance. As far as Gompers was concerned, these latter rights were not labor rights but politically contentious issues that should not be included in any labor clauses.

After mediation by Balfour and Borden, the committee agreed to retain the bulk of the AFL's list of guaranteed labor rights. The charter affirmed the right of unionization as well the principle of an adequate wage, the eight-hour workday and weekly rest, the goal of abolition of child labor, equal remuneration for men and women for work of equal value, equitable treatment of immigrant laborers, and inspection of industrial conditions. The AFL's core demand that labor not be treated as a commodity or article of commerce, however, was changed to read that labor not be regarded "merely" as a commodity or an article of commerce. The agreement further specified that all ILO members should "endeavor" to apply the labor rights indicated, and only inasmuch as "their special circumstances will permit." The list of labor rights was designated a "guide" only. The charter omitted mention of social insurance and unemployment benefits as labor rights, nor did the final version include original AFL demands for seamen's rights, trial by jury, abolition of involuntary servitude, or freedom of speech and assembly. To satisfy Gompers's repeated demands, the charter included the stipulation that no member nation would have to accept ILO recommendations that would have established labor rights or conditions less beneficial to that country's workers than were already established by national legislation.

The ILO constitution and charter were presented to the plenary peace conference on 28 April 1919, and they were accepted as Part XIII, Articles 387-427, of the Versailles Peace Treaty.

The ILO: Turning Point for Labor

The creation of the ILO marked a major turning point in international labor action. It constituted the first attempt to provide legally binding and enforceable international principles for the regulation of conditions of labor, contracts, and other societal questions of interest to labor. It created the first permanent, internationally recognized bureaucracy engaged in the preparation of labor legislation worldwide and in the creation of a world popular opinion conducive to further advancement of labor's cause. In many cases, the incorporation of the ILO charter into the national legislation of its member states marked the first acceptance of collective bargaining and coequality of labor unions in decisions affecting their interests. The principle of tripartite decision-making in labor and industrial matters was thus internationally recognized for the first time. Moreover, the ILO was carried over to the United Nations and continued its efforts as one of that organization's specialized agencies, only with a revised, more radical and broader charter that was set out in the Philadelphia Declaration of 1944. Thus, the deliberations of the labor commission in 1919 and the AFL war aims manifestoes of 1914-1918 ushered in an entirely new era in the defense and advancement of labor rights.

The vehement and prolonged criticism to which the ILO was immediately subjected by American and European conservatives attested to the radical nature of the departure. In the 1919-1920 debates over the ratification of the League of Nations Covenant, political and religious conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic almost invariably portrayed the ILO as the most objectionable, most collectivist, and most intrusive aspect of the new world organization. In the United States these conservatives managed to prevent American membership both in the League of Nations and, until 1934, in the ILO. Their passionate opposition to the ILO and to its charter left a legacy of increased suspicion of the AFL, of equating the League of Nations with international socialism, and of perceiving of the AFL as an accomplice thereto. The AFL tried to counteract and disprove this impression by stressing its fight in Paris for a noncollectivist ILO and its opposition to international communism, but it had only limited success.

Yet Gompers and other AFL leaders were themselves far from satisfied with the final nature of the ILO. Gompers was so concerned about the modifications to the charter that Arthur Balfour managed to insert in his absence that he appealed to President Wilson for some official statement to assure the American labor movement that the AFL's interests would indeed be served by the organization. Only with the help of this assurance was it possible for Gompers to stave off an incipient rebellion in the AFL and to acquire official AFL endorsement of the ILO and the League of Nations itself. Andrew Furuseth, the president of the American Seamen's Union, led AFL rebellion. Furuseth's opposition to the ILO was essentially a severe version of the same anticollectivist critique for which Gompers himself had stood. Furuseth, however, was unconvinced that Gompers had managed to keep the ILO from becoming a coercive supranational legislature.

European protagonists for international labor legislation tended to be dissatisfied with the ILO for the opposite reasons. They disapproved of the way in which both Balfour and Gompers had managed to delete all the substantive proposals of the Bern Conference from the ILO Charter. On the whole, however, European labor and socialist activists tended to argue that once the ILO was in operation and their countries bound to implement its principles, it would be possible for them to radicalize the organization from the inside, possibly to revise its charter and to point its activities in directions more to their liking. To an extent, this was later effected.

The American labor movement, on the other hand, did not benefit directly from the ILO. American nonmembership in the League of Nations meant that the provisions for labor legislation set out by the ILO could not be automatically incorporated into U.S. legislation. Also, in the aftermath of World War I, a marked shift toward the right took place in American society and politics, and this further conspired against the full implementation of the principles of the ILO charter. There was thus little immediate benefit from the ILO to American workers.

Regardless of the manifest difficulties in translating ILO recommendations into national legislation, the incorporation of a labor clause in the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations was by no means an inconsequential event. The new organization could potentially effect far-reaching reforms in labor conditions throughout the world, not least because its charter had expressly kept open the possibility of future elaboration of the organization's competence and aims. In the history of the labor movement the charter was also a powerful testimony to the combined strength of labor, socialists, and advanced liberals who, despite their differences in principle on many ideological and practical points, had pooled their efforts in 1914-1919 and had managed to inject into the corpus of international law the concept of recognized and enforceable labor rights.

Key Players

Gompers, Samuel (1850-1924): President of the American Federation of Labor from 1881 to 1924, Gompers was born in England and in 1863 immigrated to the United States, where he joined the cigar-makers' union and played a central role in the creation of the AFL. During World World I, Gompers also served as a member of the Council of National Defense, in the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, and in various other consultative posts set up by the government.

Furuseth, Andrew (1854-1938): President of the International Seamen's Union of America from 1908 to 1936 and a leading American labor critic of the ILO, the Norwegian-born Furuseth was a veteran advocate of the rights of all who worked for merchant marines, and he played a crucial role in the passage of the 1915 Seamen's Act. He represented the radical pole of voluntarist and anti-collectivist labor effort for which the AFL as a whole stood in a more moderated way.

Bibliography

Books

Alcock, Antony. History of the International Labour Office.London: Macmillan, 1971.

Gompers, Samuel. Seventy Years Life and Labour: An Autobiography, 2 vols. New York: A. M. Kelley, 1957.

Mayer, Arno J. Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918-1919. New York: Knopf, 1967.

Radosh, Ronald. American Labor and United States Foreign Policy. New York: Random House, 1969.

Ruotsila, Markku. British and American Anticommunism Before the Cold War. London: Frank Cass, 2001.

Shotwell, James T., ed. The Origins of the International Labor Organization, 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1934.

——. At the Paris Peace Conference. New York:Macmillan, 1937.

Periodicals

Ruotsila, Markku. "The Great Charter for the Liberty of the Workingman: Labour, Liberals and the Creation of the ILO." Labour History Review 67 (April 2002): 29-48.