The Many Lives of the International Labour Organization (ILO)

The effort underway since the completion of the Uruguay Round of negotiations to include a “social clause” in the new World Trade Organization (WTO) has rekindled the interests of both policy-makers and scholars in the sometimes dormant 2500 person bureaucracy created to set workplace standards globally, the International Labour Organization (ILO) headquartered in Geneva. In the heavenly firmament of international organizations the ILO should be likened to like a meteor arcing over the horizon — not a star held in dynamic equilibrium by surrounding planets but something which in passing from view though still aglow is already dead, its terrestrial destination undetermined, its impact, if any, unknown. The brief survey of the organization’s history presented in this paper will argue that the ILO can book few solid and lasting accomplishments in the field of its official operations, has at times made much mischief both in that area and collaterally, and, over the course of its long life, responded opportunistically to change rather than in any serious way shaped it. That though burned out the ILO still appears to survive, is the real measure of its success.