International Labor Organization (ILO) Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The International Labor Organization (ILO) has been a specialized agency of the United Nations since 1946. It was originally created in 1919 as part of the Treaty of Versailles negotiations in the after math of World War I (1914–1918). Since its inception one of the key activities of the ILO has been the for mulation of international labor standards. It is unique among other institutions of global governance in that it has a tripartite system that includes representatives from employers, labor, and government. Under Director-General Juan Somavía, who was elected to his first term in 1998, the ILO began to engage with other international institutions in attempting to develop a social side to globalization. The ILO conducts research and produces publications on an increasingly diverse series of issues that relate to the changing nature of work and employment.

International discussion of labor standards was developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, partly in response to fear among many European states of the revolutionary potential of workers. It was also driven by a concern that low labor standards would give some countries a competitive advantage in their trading relations with other, more progressive nations. The ILO sought to address these issues and advanced a model of decision making that gave both employers and workers an independent voice. Each member state sends two government representatives, one employer, and one labor representative to the ILO’s annual International Labour Conference. The membership of the Governing Body is organized along similar lines.

The ILO has been successful in making labor protection part of the wider discourse on human rights. The annual conference adopts conventions that then become binding at the national level, subject to their ratification by member states. Two important examples of these conventions are number 87, the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention (1948) and number 98, the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention (1949). (Interestingly, as of 2009 both of these conventions had still not been ratified by either the United States or China.) More recently the ILO has broadened its remit. For example, in 1992 it created the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour, and in 2001 it launched both the Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour and the Code of Practice on HIV/AIDS and the World of Work.

During the cold war the ILO, like many international institutions, became paralyzed by the geopolitical circumstances of the period. During the 1990s the relevance of the organization was questioned due to changes in the global economy that resulted in organized labor’s becoming more politically marginalized in many countries. However, the ILO has worked hard in recent years to reassert its importance. When the World Trade Organization announced in 1996 that it would not consider linking labor standards to trade rules, the ILO saw an opportunity to find its voice again in the multilateral system. In 1999 Somavía introduced the decent work agenda, which, among other objectives, seeks to extend the focus of the ILO to include the informal labor sector, which has grown sharply in recent years. The ILO has also begun to work with other institutions of global governance, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to develop social policies within their new Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. Supporters of the ILO suggest that its continued use of a tripartite approach offers hope for multilateralism at a time when the legitimacy of other international institutions is being questioned.

Bibliography:

Caraway,Teri L. “Freedom of Association: Battering Ram or Trojan Horse?” Review of International Political Economy 13 (2006): 210–232.
Haworth, Nigel, Stephen Hughes, and Rorden Wilkinson. “The International Labor Standards Regime: A Case Study in Global Regulation.” Environment and Planning A 37 (2005): 1939–1953.
Hughes, Steve. “The International Labour Organisation.” New Political Economy 10 (2005): 413–425.
Taylor, Robert. “A Useful Go-between? The Key Role of the ILO in Global Governance.” New Economy 9 (2002): 87–90.
Vosko, Leah F. “‘Decent Work’: The Shifting Role of the ILO and the Struggle for Global Justice.” Global Social Policy 2 (2002): 19–46.
World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization. A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities For All. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO, 2004.

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