International Labour Office

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE, an organization under the League of Nations, created on the basis of a project adopted on March 24, 1919, by a special international commission established by resolution of the Paris Peace Conference on January 31, 1919, in accordance with Article 405 of the Versailles Treaty. The tasks of the I.L.O. included only the drafting of various agreements and proposals (in the field of labor legislation), which would come into force only after ratification by the respective national legislative bodies. Article 427 of the peace treaty establishes the methods and principles by which the I.L.O. must be guided in its activities, but contains extremely few specific instructions. Characteristic is point 1, which states: "It is proclaimed as the basic guiding principle that labor in no case can be considered simply as a commodity or an article of trade." The main tasks of the I.L.O., according to statements by its leaders, were to eliminate contradictions between labor and capital through voluntary agreements by governments on comprehensive protection of labor, and to establish class cooperation in practice. In fact, the international bourgeoisie assigned two main tasks to the I.L.O.: 1) to sow among workers illusions about the possibility of significant improvement in the position of the proletariat not through revolutionary actions and persistent class struggle, but along the rails of peaceful social evolution and on the basis of parliamentary agreements resulting from the policy of civil peace, and 2) to prevent or alleviate difficulties arising from capitalist competition and uneven development of labor legislation in different countries. Key points of the organizational structure of the I.L.O.: international conferences of representatives of all participating states are held annually (by 1927 - 55). Each country delegates two representatives from the government and one each from central employer and worker organizations, but only those "recognized" by the government. On this basis, annually, despite objections from the entire working part of the conference, the representative of fascist trade unions appointed by the Italian government is an official participant. Approval of conference resolutions requires by statute */₈ votes of those present. With the above composition of the conference, any resolution against its working curia, which has only ¹/₁ of all votes, can always be passed, which has already been used by entrepreneurs on numerous occasions. Thus, proposals for an 8-hour working day for seamen and agricultural workers in 1920 and 1921 were rejected because for ²/₃ there was a lack of one vote the first time and five votes the second time. At the head of the I.L.O. is an Administrative Council of 24 people (12 from governments and 6 each from employer and worker organizations). The chairman of the council is (1927) Arthur Fontain, representative of the French government, and the vice-chairman is Udhegest, one of the most opportunist leaders of the Western European labor movement. The Director of the I.L.O. is the French right socialist Albert Thomas, who has held this position continuously. The I.L.O. has 3 departments: 1) diplomatic, 2) scientific research, and 3) information and relations, which in turn are divided into a number of sections and subsections. In particular, it should be noted the presence in the scientific research department of the I.L.O.: a) a Russian section, collecting and publishing materials about the USSR, usually selected and presented in a very unfriendly and biased manner, b) a safety engineering section (studying reports of factory inspectors) and an organization for combating industrial accidents and c) an industrial hygiene section. At the head of the latter is Professor L. Carozzi, who is developing very intensive activities to establish international connections, and to collect and publish materials on industrial hygiene and combating occupational diseases in different countries. This section has published a number of very interesting monographs, in particular, in 1927 a very detailed work "La ceruse" (about lead); in 1925 the publication of a very skillfully compiled encyclopedia on occupational hygiene "L'Hygiene industrielle" was begun, to which the best specialists from all countries have been invited to participate. In 1927, the protocols of the 1st International Düsseldorf Conference on the organization of sanitary-industrial supervision were published. The I.L.O. publishes the following periodicals: 1) "Revue internationale du travail", a substantial theoretical monthly, which examines the problems discussed in a very one-sided and often biased manner; 2) "Informations sociales" (a weekly bulletin with international labor chronicle); 3) "S6rie legislative", publishing legislative materials on labor; 4) "Chronique de la securite industrielle" (a bimonthly journal on safety engineering); 5) "Bi-bliographie d'hygiene industrielle" (4 issues per year), which in particular uses the main medical press of the USSR. In addition, the I.L.O. publishes a number of other periodicals, books and materials. The scope of the I.L.O.'s work is characterized by its staff (about 500 people) and budget (in 1926/27 about 7.7 million Swiss francs, or about 3 million rubles per year). This entire huge machine, while performing very useful informational and research work, gives completely negligible results from a socio-political point of view. At 10 I.L.O. conferences, 24 (sometimes very serious) conventions and a number of recommendations were adopted; the most important of them: 1919 - on the 8-hour working day, on night work for women and adolescents; 1920 - on the protection of labor for seamen; 1921 - on weekly rest in industry, on the minimum age of workers in agriculture; 1923 - on the general principles of labor inspection organization; 1926 - on night work in bakeries; 1927 - on compulsory insurance against diseases. According to I.L.O. materials, each state represented in the League of Nations was obliged to ratify the adopted conventions no later than 18 months after the conference. However, this provision was never implemented in practice. By 1927, out of the 1,320 (55x24) ratifications envisaged, according to information from A. Thomas, only 229 had taken place - and even then, predominantly of the least significant conventions and in states of secondary importance. It is characteristic that the main convention on the 8-hour working day, despite its more than moderate character, allowing a number of very serious restrictions in the text of the law itself, was ratified by only Belgium and France among the major countries; the latter also "conditionally", depending on its ratification by Germany, which in turn requires prior assurance of its simultaneous ratification and the issuance of corresponding laws in the main countries of Europe. It is clear that the USSR, for principled reasons, does not participate in the I.L.O.