International Labour Organization Totally Explained

Everything about The International Labour Organization totally explained

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a specialised agency of the United Nations that deals with labour issues. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. Its secretariat — the people who are employed by it throughout the world — is known as the International Labour Office. The organization received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969.

Goals

As stated by its director-general, "the primary goal of the 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." In working towards this goal, the organization seeks to promote employment creation, strengthen fundamental principles and rights at work - workers' rights, improve social protection, and promote social dialogue as well as provide relevant information, training and technical assistance. At present, the ILO's work is organized into four thematic groupings or sectors: (1) Standards and fundamental principles and rights at work; (2) Employment; (3) Social Protection; and (4) Social Dialogue.

History

The ILO was established as an agency of the League of Nations in the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I.
Post-war reconstruction and the protection of labour unions occupied the attention of many nations during and immediately after World War I. In Great Britain, the Whitley Commission, a subcommittee of the Reconstruction Commission, recommended in its July 1918 Final Report that "industrial councils" be established throughout the world. The British Labour Party had issued its own reconstruction programme in the document titled Labour and the New Social Order. In February 1918, the third Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference (representing delegates from Great Britain, France, Belgium and Italy) issued its report, advocating an international labour rights body, an end to secret diplomacy, and other goals. And in December 1918, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) issued its own distinctively apolitical report, which called for the achievement of numerous incremental improvements via the collective bargaining process.
As the war drew to a close, two competing visions for the post-war world emerged. The first was offered by the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), which called for a meeting in Berne in July 1919. The Berne meeting would consider both the future of the IFTU and the various proposals which had been made in the previous few years. The IFTU also proposed including delegates from the Central Powers as equals. Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL, boycotted the meeting, wanting the Central Powers delegates in a subservient role as an admission of guilt for their countries' role in the bringing about war. Instead, Gompers favored a meeting in Paris which would only consider President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points as a platform. Despite the American boycott, the Berne meeting went ahead as scheduled. In its final report, the Berne Conference demanded an end to wage labour and the establishment of socialism. If these ends couldn't be immediately achieved, then an international body attached to the League of Nations should enact and enforce legislation to protect workers and trade unions.

International Labour Conference

The ILO organises the International Labour Conference in Geneva every year in June, where conventions and recommendations are crafted and adopted. The conference also makes decisions on the ILO's general policy, work programme and budget.
Each member state is represented at the conference by four people: two government delegates, an employer delegate and a worker delegate. All of them have individual voting rights, and all votes are equal, regardless of the population of the delegate's member state. The employer and worker delegates are normally chosen in agreement with the "most representative" national organizations of employers and workers. Usually, the workers' delegates coordinate their voting, as do the employers' delegates.

International Labour Code

One of the principal functions of the ILO is setting international labour standards through the adoption of conventions and recommendations covering a broad spectrum of labour-related subjects and which, together, are sometimes referred to as the International Labour Code. The topics covered include a wide range of issues, from freedom of association to health and safety at work, working conditions in the maritime sector, night work, discrimination, child labour, and forced labour.

Conventions

Adoption

Adoption of a convention by the International Labour Conference allows governments to ratify it, and the convention then becomes a treaty in international law when a specified number of governments have done so. But all adopted ILO conventions are considered international labour standards regardless of how many governments have ratified them.

Ratification

The coming into force of a convention results in a legal obligation to apply its provisions by the nations that have ratified it. Ratification of a convention is voluntary. Conventions that have not been ratified by member states have the same legal force as do recommendations. Governments are required to submit reports detailing their compliance with the obligations of the conventions they've ratified. Every year the International Labour Conference's Committee on the Application of Standards examines a number of alleged breaches of international labour standards. In recent years, one of the member states that has received the most attention is Myanmar / Burma, as the country has repeatedly been criticised for its failure to protect its citizens against forced labour exacted by the army.

1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work

In 1998 the 86th International Labour Conference adopted the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. This declaration identified four issue areas as "core" or fundamental international labour standards, meaning that any ILO member state should have ratified at least the eight key conventions, which concern freedom of association and collective bargaining, discrimination, forced labour, and child labour. These core or fundamental standards have been ratified by the overwhelming majority of ILO member states.

Criticism of the establishment of core or fundamental labour standards

Despite the rapid ratification by many countries of the eight conventions identified as fundamental, a number of academics and activists have criticised the ILO for creating a "false division" between different international labour standards, many of which cover specific and concrete human rights topics but were excluded from the 1998 declaration, such as those on health and safety and working hours. To add further confusion, the new core conventions are often exclusively referred to as being human rights, whereas before all international labour standards were viewed as human rights. Philip Alston, John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University, has written on this "narrowing" of international labour standards in the name of human rights advocacy.

Recommendations

Recommendations don't have the binding force of conventions and are not subject to ratification by member countries. Recommendations may be adopted at the same time as conventions to supplement the latter with additional or more detailed provisions. In other cases recommendations may be adopted separately and may address issues not covered by, or unrelated to any particular convention.

Child labour

The term “child labour” is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that's harmful to physical and mental development.
It refers to work that:

is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and
interferes with their schooling by:
depriving them of the opportunity to attend school;
obliging them to leave school prematurely; or
requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.

In its most extreme forms, child labour involves children being enslaved, separated from their families, exposed to serious hazards and illnesses and/or left to fend for themselves on the streets of large cities – often at a very early age. Whether or not particular forms of “work” can be called “child labour” depends on the child’s age, the type and hours of work performed, the conditions under which it's performed and the objectives pursued by individual countries. The answer varies from country to country, as well as among sectors within countries.
Not all work done by children should be classified as child labour that's to be targeted for elimination. Children’s or adolescents’ participation in work that doesn't affect their health and personal development or interfere with their schooling, is generally regarded as being something positive. This includes activities such as helping their parents around the home, assisting in a family business or earning pocket money outside school hours and during school holidays. These kinds of activities contribute to children’s development and to the welfare of their families; they provide them with skills and experience, and help to prepare them to be productive members of society during their adult life.

ILO’s Response to Child Labour

The ILO’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) was created in 1992 with the overall goal of the progressive elimination of child labour, which was to be achieved through strengthening the capacity of countries to deal with the problem and promoting a worldwide movement to combat child labour. IPEC currently has operations in 88 countries, with an annual expenditure on technical cooperation projects that reached over US$74 million in 2006. It is the largest programme of its kind globally and the biggest single operational programme of the ILO.
The number and range of IPEC’s partners have expanded over the years and now include employers’ and workers’ organizations, other international and government agencies, private businesses, community-based organizations, NGOs, the media, parliamentarians, the judiciary, universities, religious groups and, of course, children and their families.
IPEC's work to eliminate child labour is an important facet of the ILO's Decent Work Agenda. (External Link

) Child labour not only prevents children from acquiring the skills and education they need for a better future, it also perpetuates poverty and affects national economies through losses in competitiveness, productivity and potential income. Withdrawing children from child labour, providing them with education and assisting their families with training and employment opportunities contribute directly to creating decent work for adults.

International Training Centre

The International Labour Organization and the Italian Government established the International Training Centre (ITC)(External Link

) in 1964 in Turin, Italy, as an advanced vocational training institute.
   Working in close partnership with regional and national training institutions, the Centre assists in disseminating the ILO’s principles and policies, and strengthening the capacity of national institutions to implement relevant programmes, in line with the organisation’s strategic objectives.
   The ITC provides training to assist countries in their social and economic development on a wide range of issues such as fundamental principles and rights at work; employment and income opportunities for women and men; social protection for all, tripartism and social dialogue; and management of the development process.
   The Centre's main campus is located in Turin and is open to people from all countries, with differing agendas and interests, to develop human resources and institutional capabilities and to contribute to the ILO's goal of decent work for women and men.(External Link

)

Forced labour

The ILO has a specialist program working to research and expose forced labour working in networks around the globe.

HIV/AIDS

Under the name ILOAIDS, the ILO created the Code of Practice on HIV/AIDS and the World of Work as a document providing principles for "policy development and practical guidelines for programmes at enterprise, community, and national levels." Including:

prevention of HIV

management and mitigation of the impact of AIDS on the world of work

care and support of workers infected and affected by HIV/AIDS

elimination of stigma and discrimination on the basis of real or perceived HIV status.

Membership

Membership is limited to nation-states, including all who were members on 1 November 1945, when the organisation's new constitution came into effect. In addition, any original member of the United Nations and any state admitted thereafter may also join. Other states can be admitted by a super-majority vote of any ILO General Conference. ILO Constitution

There are 181 members of the ILO.

Further Information

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