L’OIT, les normes et l’histoire

This article analyzes how the International Labour Organization (ILO), founded in 1919 as part of the League of Nations and since 1946 a United Nations specialized agency, has established international labor standards to improve working conditions and protect workers? rights all over the world. While the first steps toward the international regulation of working conditions go back to the initiatives of employers and social reform networks in the nineteenth century, it was the leverage that trade unions had gained during the First World War and the fear of widespread revolutionary unrest that led to the establishment of the ILO through the Treaty of Versailles. It was and still is the only tripartite organization within the multilateral system, where workers?, employers?, and government representatives negotiate and adopt international labour standards to promote social justice and peace. During the interwar period, ILO standard setting reflected the influence of European social reform networks. Its binding conventions and non-binding recommendations targeted mostly formally employed and often unionized (male) workers in a growing number of industries. In order to monitor progress and compliance, the ILO established early on a supervisory mechanism. It was based on ratifying governments? regular reporting obligations and the interpretation of labour standards by external experts. During the Second World War, the ILO positioned itself in the camp of the Allied forces. In 1944, it developed in Philadelphia a broad post-Second World War program on global social policy. It was based on the lessons learned from the economic crisis and the war, and formed part of the emerging human rights paradigm that led to the adoption of a few conventions reflecting the ILO?s most fundamental principles, such as freedom of association, equal pay, the elimination of discrimination, and the abolition of forced labor. Between 1944 and 1989, ILO standard setting benefited from the Cold War situation, which allowed workers to push through the adoption of labour standards at a high rate. With decolonization, many new member states joined the ILO, and although they identified with the ILO?s social model of standard employment and ratified its labour standards, they encountered problems when implementing them because of their technical and sectoral character. In order to respond to the development needs of its new members, the ILO greatly expanded its technical cooperation and also adopted a small number of standards that were more promotional, with flexibility clauses and exceptions. With the end of the Cold War, the acceleration of globalization, and the increasing dominance of the neoliberal paradigm, ILO standard setting came under harsh criticism from employers and governments, especially from developing countries. In a context of deregulation, the ILO?s labour standards, which obtained fewer and fewer ratifications, were increasingly seen as an obstacle to economic growth. With the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and the Decent Work Agenda, ILO standard setting shifted its focus to the promotion of four fundamental rights (freedom of association, the abolition of child labour, the abolition of forced labour, and the elimination of any type of discrimination) and the related eight ?core? conventions, which were defined as instruments with an ?enabling? function for workers to claim their share of the wealth they had helped generate. In recent decades, only a few new standards have been adopted. Some of them address for the first time the informal economy, which is the reality for around 61 percent of workers around the world. There is a clear trend toward less binding instruments, such as declarations or recommendations, since compromise between constituents is much harder to achieve and new, fundamental conflicts have emerged, for example with regard to the supervisory mechanism.