International Labor Organization

The International Labor Organization (ILO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that deals with matters relating to labor and industrial relations. It was founded on April 11, 1919, by virtue of the Treaty of Versailles with the double objective of achieving the global expansion of workers' rights and mitigating the causes of the workers' revolutions that fundamentally shook some of the countries involved in the First World War. World War. Its Constitution, sanctioned in 1919, is complemented by the Declaration of Philadelphia of 1944.

The ILO has a tripartite government, made up of ILO and establishes the program and budget that are subsequently presented to the Conference for approval. It also elects the CEO. In 2022, the Togolese Gilbert Houngbo was elected to the position, once the mandate of the British Guy Ryder, elected in 2012, ended. The headquarters are located in Geneva (Switzerland).

In 1969 the ILO received the Nobel Peace Prize. It is made up of 187 national states (2021).

History

The International Labor Organization was founded in 1919. The negotiations had the particularity of being carried out between governments, unions and employers' organizations, who took as a basis the International Association for the Legal Protection of Workers, which it had been founded in Basel in 1901 to establish the Constitution of the International Labor Organization, adopted by the Paris Peace Conference and included in section XIII of the Treaty of Versailles located in France.

The constitution of the ILO took place at the Washington conference held between October 29 and November 29, 1919, in which Francisco Largo Caballero, general secretary of the socialist General Union, participated as a representative of the Spanish labor organizations of Workers, being elected a member of its Board of Directors and collaborating very closely from then on with the first Director General of the ILO, the Frenchman Albert Thomas.

The International Labor Organization was organized from the beginning with a tripartite government, the only one of its kind, made up of representatives of governments, workers and employers, and elected the Frenchman Albert Thomas as its first director general.

Between 1919 and 1921, the ILO sanctioned sixteen international labor conventions and eighteen recommendations and in 1926 a control mechanism was introduced, still in force, by which each country must annually submit a report informing about the state of application of the standards international. In order to examine these reports, the Committee of Experts was also created, made up of independent jurists, which submits its report to the Conference every year.

In 1934, under the government of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the United States applied for membership in the ILO. During the Second World War the ILO was temporarily installed in Montreal.

In 1944, when the war had not yet ended, the International Labor Conference in Philadelphia approved the Declaration of Philadelphia, which was incorporated as an annex to the Constitution, establishing the principles, purposes and objectives of the ILO. In 1948, the Freedom of Association Convention, No. 87, was adopted.

In 1977 the United States withdrew from the ILO, causing a budgetary crisis due to the automatic 25% reduction in the budget that this meant, but it could be controlled until its re-entry in 1980.

In the 1980s the ILO played a decisive role in the development of the Solidarity Union led by Lech Wałęsa, applying the Freedom of Association Convention (1948).

After the Cold War and facing the process of globalization and deterioration of labor rights throughout the world, the ILO has pointed out the need to give priority to compliance with the Standards and Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work guaranteed by the eight fundamental conventions (union freedom, collective bargaining, abolition of forced labor, abolition of child labor, elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation), highlighting the concepts of decent employment and democratization of globalization. and that is its function.

Organs

ILO Headquarters in Geneva

International Conference

The International Labor Conference is the highest body of the ILO. It meets annually, in June, in Geneva. It is made up of four delegates from each member country, two of them elected by the government, and the other two proposed by the workers' and employers' organizations respectively. In this way, half of the members of the Conference represent the governments, while a quarter integrates the workers bloc, and the other quarter integrates the employers bloc.

The International Conference is responsible for sanctioning international labor standards, mainly conventions and recommendations, by two-thirds of its members.

It is also up to the International Conference to examine the annual reports that each country must present on the state of application of international standards, and eventually approve recommendations in cases where there are deficiencies. In this task, the Conference has the help of the important Committee of Experts, which must examine each report and produce a report to the Conference recommending the courses of action in each case.

As of 1998, the Conference must examine the Global Report on what is ordered by the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (DFT), which must be prepared by the Office, and must report, every year Rotatingly, the status of each of these points:

• Freedom of association and association and effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
• the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour;
• the effective abolition of child labour,
• the elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation.

Commission of Experts

The Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR) is a permanent advisory body to the International Conference, made up of lawyers specialized in International Labor Law.

The function of the Committee of Experts is to examine the reports that all countries have the obligation to present each year, detailing the state of the application of international conventions in their territory.

Each year the Committee of Experts must present its report to the Conference, with the opinion that each situation deserves and the recommendations that it proposes in each case. The opinions of the Committee of Experts have acquired great legal importance for the interpretation of international standards and are compiled as jurisprudence in each convention, in the ILOLEX database.

Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is made up of 56 people. Of the 28 members that correspond to the governments, 10 are appointed directly by the ten countries of greatest industrial importance (Germany, Brazil, China, the United States, France, India, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and Russia) and the rest by the Government delegates at the Conference. The other 28 members correspond in equal parts to workers and employers and are elected by the corresponding blocks in the Conference. Members are renewed every three years.

It is the executive body of the ILO, meets every four months and acts through the International Labor Office, whose operating rules it establishes.

Committee on Freedom of Association

The Committee on Freedom of Association (CLS) is an important body that reports to the Board of Directors, made up of nine of its members and an independent president, belonging equally to the three blocks (States, Employers and Workers). Its function is to intervene in complaints related to freedom of association, derived from possible violations of International Agreements No. 87 and 98 and those that are complementary.

The importance of the CLS lies in the high political profile of its members, and in the power it has to formulate critical recommendations to governments, when it determines that union freedom has been affected.

International Labor Office and Director General

The International Labor Office is headed by the Director General, elected by the Board of Directors for a five-year term, who in turn hires the staff according to strict competition rules.

The International Labor Office is the permanent entity supporting the work of the International Conference and the Governing Body.

The directors general of the ILO have been:

• Albert Thomas (1919-1932)
• Harold Butler (1932-1939)
• John Winant (1939-1941)
• Edward Phelan (1941-1948)
• David Morse (1948-1970)
• Wilfred Jenks (1970-1973)
• Francis Blanchard (1973-1989)
• Michel Hansenne (1989-1999)
• Juan Somavía (1999-2012)
• Guy Ryder (2012-2022)
• Gilbert Houngbo (2022-present)

Regional offices

ILO Headquarters for the Southern Cone of Latin America, in Santiago de Chile.

The International Labor Office has a decentralized regional structure in five regions:

• Africa
• Latin America and the Caribbean
• Arab States
• Asia and the Pacific
• Europe and Central Asia

In turn, each region has subregional and area offices. The United States and Canada are not included in any of the regions.

Executive Directorate of Social Dialogue

The International Labor Office is made up of a cabinet of five executive directorates. One of them is that of Social Dialogue, which in turn is divided into two important structures: the Support Offices for Workers' Activities (ACTRAV) and Employers' Offices (ACTEMP).

ACTIVATION

ACTRAV is the Support Office for Workers' Activities. It acts in direct relationship with the workers' bloc of the International Conference, the two international centers (ITUC and WFTU), the world unions (global union federations) and the national trade union centers.

ACTEMP

ACTEMP is the Support Office for Employers' Activities. It acts in direct relationship with the employers block of the International Conference, the international center (OIE), and the sectoral, regional and national business chambers.

Languages of the institution

The ILO has three main languages: English, French and Spanish. Currently, all the notes, bulletins and documentation for the press and two of the main publications of the institution are published in these three languages: the International Labor Review (six annual issues) and the report El Trabajo en el mundo (annual). However, other publications do not appear in Spanish, for example, in order for a Spanish version of the Sociolaboral Newsletter to be published (quarterly, which has just closed) they had to do the printing, in recent years, first by the Mexican Government and, then, Spanish.

Standards, conventions, recommendations and declarations

The Constitution of the ILO, sanctioned in its original wording in 1919, by cause and effect is the rule that establishes the operation and organization of the ILO. There, the governing bodies of the ILO are established (General Conference, Board of Administration and International Labor Office), the tripartite composition of the collegiate bodies, the procedures for sanctioning conventions and recommendations and their effects, the regular control system through annual reports, the complaints procedure, among the most important issues.

As an Annex to the Constitution is the Declaration of Philadelphia, sanctioned in 1944, which contains the fundamental principles and purposes of the ILO. There is the famous principle establishing that "work is not a commodity" (I,a). Among other fundamental principles and declarations, it establishes that "poverty constitutes a danger to the prosperity of all" (I,b), that "all human beings have the right to pursue their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunities" (II,b) and that "any policy and measure of a national and international nature, particularly of an economic and financial nature, must be judged from this point of view and accepted only when they favor, and do not hinder, the fulfillment of this fundamental objective», incumbent on the ILO «to examine and consider any international program or measure of an economic and financial nature» (II,d), and «to promote full employment».

The ILO sanctions international conventions and recommendations. Both require a two-thirds majority to be approved by the International Conference. International conventions are binding international treaties for their members once ratified, while the recommendations are not mandatory, are not ratified by the member states and constitute suggestions to the countries to progress in labor relations. Generally, it corresponds to any sanctioned agreement and its purpose is the promotion and orientation of national activities in certain areas (examples: Recommendation No. 77 on the professional training of seafarers (1946), Recommendation No. 194 on the list of occupational diseases (2002), Recommendation No. 197 on the promotional framework for occupational safety and health (2006),...)

So far, the ILO has established ten international conventions as fundamental. These are:

• Forced Labour Convention No. 29, 1930
• Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise, 1948
• Convention No. 98 on the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining, 1949
• Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951
• Convention No. 105 on the Abolition of Forced Labour, 1957
• Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958
• Minimum Age Convention, 1973
• Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999
• Labour Safety and Health Convention No. 155
• Convention No. 187 on the Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health

In addition, in 1989 the ILO Convention 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples was approved, which until the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was the only international instrument that recognized collective rights of indigenous people. In its 100th Conference, it has approved Convention 189 called the Domestic Workers Convention.

Throughout its history, the ILO has enacted 190 international conventions and 206 recommendations, which can be consulted in the organization's database [1].

Health, occupational safety and social security are priority issues regulated by several Conventions. On maternity protection, Convention 183 was approved in 2000. Special situations have been considered, such as labor migration (Conventions 21 of 1926, 48 of 1945, 66 of 1939, 97 of 1949 and Convention 143 of 1975 on workers emigrants), as well as night work, and working conditions in mines, chemical companies, ports, the sea and the agricultural sector. Convention 141 approved in 1975 deals with rural workers' organizations and recognizes "that agrarian reform is, in many developing countries, an essential factor for the improvement of working and living conditions". In 1957, the ILO approved Convention 107 on indigenous and tribal populations, replaced by Convention 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples, approved at the 76th meeting on June 7, 1989, which until now constitutes the main instrument of international law. for the defense of the indigenous peoples of the world and their territories.

The ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its follow-up, made in 1998, is also of great importance, in view of the serious problems brought about by globalization on labor rights. The Declaration ordered to pay special attention to the effective application of the fundamental rights of workers, namely:

• freedom of association and freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
• the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour;
• the effective abolition of child labour;
• the elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation.

The Declaration specifies that fundamental labor rights are universal and must be respected for all people in all countries, regardless of each one's level of economic development.

To this end, the ILO created a mechanism for monitoring the Declaration through an annual report to the Conference in which the situation of each of the four groups of rights is analyzed, in rotation.

Action

Juan Somavía, who was Director General of the ILO, has said that:

The main goal of ILO today is to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity.

The organization seeks to promote job creation, better regulate the principles and rights of workers, improve social protection and promote social dialogue as well as provide relevant information, assistance and training techniques. Currently, the ILO is organized to work in four thematic groups or sectors:

• Standard principles and rights at work.
• Employment.
• Social protection.
• Social dialogue.

Among the programs that the ILO carries out, the International Program for the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC) stands out.