Thread by @ErikLoomis

This Day in Labor History: July 9, 1948. The International Labour Organization signed The Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention. The U.S. never ratifies it. Let's talk about international labor standards and how ILO conventions can guide us.

The International Labour Organization came to be in 1919 as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. As the U.S. never ratified that treaty, it did not join the ILO until 1934.

The ILO became significantly more important after World War II as it became closely associated with the United Nations. The UN asked the ILO to create a series of conventions immediately after the war, making the request official in 1947.

The Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention is one of the 8 conventions that make up the core of international labor law. It is a very basic document. Article 1 urges all ILO states to follow the following direction:

Article 2:
Workers and employers, without distinction whatsoever, shall have the right to establish and, subject only to the rules of the organisation concerned, to join organisations of their own choosing without previous authorisation.

Article 3 (Part 1)
Workers’ and employers’ organisations shall have the right to draw up their constitutions and rules, to elect their representatives in full freedom, to organise their administration and activities and to formulate their programmes.

Article 3 (Part 2)

The public authorities shall refrain from any interference which would restrict this right or impede the lawful exercise thereof.

Article 4
Workers’ and employers’ organisations shall not be liable to be dissolved or suspended by administrative authority.

Article 5
Workers’ and employers’ organisations shall have the right to establish and join federations and confederations and any such organisation, federation or confederation shall have the right to affiliate with international organisations of workers and employers.

Article 6
The provisions of Articles 2, 3 and 4 hereof apply to federations and confederations of workers’ and employers’ organisations.

Article 7
The acquisition of legal personality by workers’ and employers’ organisations, federations and confederations shall not be made subject to conditions of such a character as to restrict the application of the provisions of Articles 2, 3 and 4 hereof.

Article 8 (Part 1)
In exercising the rights provided for in this Convention workers and employers and their respective organisations, like other persons or organised collectivities, shall respect the law of the land.

Article 8 (Part 2)

The law of the land shall not be such as to impair, nor shall it be so applied as to impair, the guarantees provided for in this Convention.

Article 9 (Part 1):
The extent to which the guarantees provided for in this Convention shall apply to the armed forces and the police shall be determined by national laws or regulations.

Article 10
In this Convention the term organisation means any organisation of workers or of employers for furthering and defending the interests of workers or of employers.

Yet this was too far for the United States. In fact, the United States has only ratified two of the eight fundamental conventions. The U.S. voted for the convention within the ILO and Harry Truman sent it to the Senate for ratification in 1949.

Secretary of State Dean Acheson assured the Senate that the U.S. would need no legal changes to comply with it. But 1949 was not an auspicious time for international labor conventions and the U.S. Senate, not in the aftermath of the Taft-Hartley Act and the rise of McCarthyism

John Bricker, the isolationist and anti-union senator from Ohio led the opposition, saying the ILO “wants to become the economic overseer of all humanity.”

The fear of international supremacy over American law also motivated many senators to not support the ILO and other international legal frameworks.

Bricker, based in part on his opposition to the ILO, tried for constitutional amendments that would significantly reduce presidential power to agree to international law and in 1954 his amendment failed in the Senate by 1 vote after Dwight Eisenhower intervened against it.

The Senate never ratified the convention. Conservatives have occasionally spoke out for ratification over the years, including George Schulz, Elizabeth Dole, and even Orrin Hatch. But it has never again received serious attention.

Today, 153 nations have ratified the convention. Among the 30 nations who have not ratified it are North Korea, Belarus, and the United States. It’s not a dead letter either. A few years ago, Somalia signed it. But not the United States.

It undermines American credibility on labor issues worldwide. When the U.S. lectures about democracy, as it has since the early days of the Cold War, labor issues and the freedom of association are usually part of that critique.

Yet many at home and abroad have noted that, once again, the U.S. does not practice what it preaches because it won’t pass the basic ILO conventions.

It’s not as if the U.S. never passes ILO conventions. For instance, in 1999, the Senate ratified an ILO convention against particularly exploitative forms of child labor.

But a serious commitment to international labor rights is of little interest to many senators, indicative of a nation that has not passed major pro-labor legislation since 1938. In fact, the US has ratified only 14 of the 188 ILO conventions.

We might ask whether such agreements make a difference. Obviously Somalia does not all of a sudden lead the world in labor rights. Nor do other signatory nations Bangladesh, Guatemala (which signed it under the leadership of Jacobo Arbenz), or Honduras.

Enforcement matters and the ILO doesn’t have enforcement rights. Yet in a world of rampant global labor exploitation, often led by American companies operating internationally, it’s quite telling that the United States refuses to sign on to basic international labor rights.

Like any international agreement, it’s strength is largely determined by the most powerful members.

In the U.S., whether in international law or international agreements to stop Bangladeshis from dying in factories making clothing for Walmart, the nation’s political and business leaders refuse to commit to anything that might hold the powerful accountable.

So here's the thing about international labor standards and enforcement mechanisms--they are boring. Isn't organizing and talking about solidarity and strikes so much more exciting! I don't disagree, but this stuff is at least as important.

So long as the left doesn't take the specific details of international trade agreements seriously, it cedes the entire field to the capitalists. The left has to do more than yell "NO!" at international trade. And yet that is all it has done for years.

The great people at @USAS have done a great job on this and made major gains in the 90s and early 00s, but after 9/11, it fell off the left's radar and never quite made it back. It certainly isn't today.

International trade agreements are going to happen. They have to in an era of international trade. Tariffs are backwards, nationalist, and are proven political disasters. We need to articulate our own view of international trade. That's where ILO regulations can help us.

The ILO has all sorts of suggested conventions around trade and other labor issues. We don't have to invent this all out of whole cloth. We can build on what great people are doing around the world, even if in a vacuum without any enforcement mechanism. But we really don't .

Meanwhile, our labor rights at home have been repealed at a rapid rate (hello Janus!) and will continue to be so long as Republicans control politics. As we articulate the world we want to see, both nationally and internationally, ILO conventions can do a lot for us.

More broadly, we have to think more internationally as labor activists. We aren't in this alone. In fact, labor conditions in the U.S. are becoming more like the rest of the world as global capital tightens its control over all of us.

If you want to know more about the International Labour Organization and its relationship with the U.S., this is really good paper on the issue. Read it.

scholarship.law.gwu.edu/cgi/viewconten…

If you want to know more about the decline of American labor due to global capitalism and how our companies have created a global race to the bottom, that's the subject of my first book.

amazon.com/Out-Sight-Corp…

And if you want to think through some strategies to help us overcome this international labor exploitation using international strategies and national strategies simultaneously, I wrote this piece.

dissentmagazine.org/article/left-v…

Back tomorrow with a discussion of the marriage discrimination female flight attendants at United faced for decades and how they fought back.