The First International Labour Conference, 1919 / Harold B. Butler, ILO Director 1932-1938

Harold B. Butler (1883-1951) studied at Oxford, entered the British Civil Service 1907; Ministry of Labour 1917 as Assistant Secretary to the Minister. In 1918 he, Phelan and Malcolm Delevigne drafted a programme for the Labour Section of the Paris Peace Conference. In 1919 he was appointed Secretary to the Organizing Committee and Secretary-General of the First Session of the ILC in Washington, DC. In the early years of the ILO he served as Deputy Director of the Office, with responsibility for administration and finance. In 1932 he succeeded Albert Thomas as Director of the ILO. He resigned in 1938 and became Warden at Huffield College, Oxford. Commissioner for Civil Defense 1939 to 1941 and Minister at the British Embassy in Washington D.C. from 1942 to 1946.

Butler had a considerable influence on the work of the first Conference. As Edward Phelan later was to write: “In moments of difficulty, and more particularly on constitutional and procedural questions, the Conference listened most readily to those who had planned it in Paris and to none with more attention than to the Secretary-General, Mr. Butler.

While the Peace Treaty provided for the composition of the Annual Labour Conference it left it to determine its own procedure. The Organizing Committee devoted considerable care and labour to drafting a set of provisional Standing Orders, which were adopted at the second sitting of the Conference but which were then referred to a special committee of the Conference for further examination.

This committee, after prolonged discussion, submitted a revised set of Standing Orders in 20 Articles, which were adopted by the Conference. They do not call for any detailed comment here, but they suggest two general observations. In the first place, experience has since shown the wisdom of the Organizing Committee and of the Conference in settling the parliamentary procedure of the Conference at the very beginning. Practice differs considerably from country to country.

The powers of the chairman, the method of moving resolutions, the method of voting, the application of the closure, are all matters of vital importance to the proper conduct of any gathering, but matters about which the greatest variety of custom prevails in the different assemblies of the world. As the Committee observed:

It has not been possible to find in every case a rule which everyone will regard as satisfactory. This fact should be borne in mind, and it should be recognized that the procedure followed in any one country or group of countries could not be inserted in the Standing Orders.

They were, in fact, the first set of international standing orders ever framed, resting on a compromise between a large number of national practices. Although they have since been amended from time to time, they have on the whole stood the test of practical application, and have rendered great service to the Organization by providing it with a body of rules to which the members of the Conference have gradually become thoroughly accustomed. The resulting expedition in the dispatch of business and the avoidance of confusion in regard to procedure have saved the Conference many hours of time and much loss of patience.

The other point which merits notice is the emergence of the language question at the first Conference held under the auspices of the International Labour Organization. Viscount de Eza, representing the Spanish Government, put forward a plea for the recognition of Spanish as a third official language. His claim led to similar pleas put forward for the recognition of German and one of the Slav languages. In point of fact, an arrangement had already been made whereby a translation of the proceedings into Spanish was daily provided for the delegates at the expense of the United States Government. No international meeting can function effectively unless at least the great majority of its members can follow the proceedings satisfactorily. In the Labour Conference, where the delegates do not usually possess the same advantages, the necessity of interpreting the proceedings to them, as far as possible in a variety of languages, was thus early found to be imperative.

The Washington Conference set a further precedent of far-reaching importance in the future history of the Organization in recognizing the existence of the employers’ and workers’ groups. When the Treaty was drawn up it was probably not foreseen that the employers’ and workers’ delegates, being necessarily bound by strong ties of common sympathy and interest, would inevitably tend to form distinct blocs with a view to united action. In any case, no provision of the Treaty suggests that such an eventuality was contemplated. Nevertheless, before the Conference had even assembled for the first time, the two groups were already taking shape.

In the case of the employers, the germ of such an organization was already in existence. In 1911, Signor Olivetti organized the first International Congress of Industrial and Agricultural Employers’ Organizations (Congresso internazionale dell’organisazioni padronali dell’industria e dell’ agricoltura). This meeting gave birth to the idea of setting up an international employers’ information centre, and in 1913 M. Carlier and M. Lecocq, at that time President and Secretary respectively of the Comité central industriel de Belgique, got into touch with various European countries in search of support for creating such a centre. As a result of a meeting held in Paris in June, 1914, its establishment was agreed upon, with M. Carlier and M. Lecocq as President and Secretary respectively. The War prevented the realization of the project, but they revived it when the convening of the Washington Conference was announced. On reaching Washington they took the initiative, in conjunction with M. Guérin (France) and Mr. Marjoribanks (Great Britain) by inviting employers’ delegates to attend a meeting in the Navy Building on October 28, the day before the opening of the Conference. From that time onwards, it was the employers’ group thus constituted which put forward employers’ nominations for the Vice-Presidency, for the membership of committees, and, finally, for membership of the Governing Body. It decided at group meetings the policy which should be adopted in regard to most, if not all, of the questions which came up for discussion, and a series of important amendments to the draft convention on hours of work was moved on behalf of the whole employers’ group. Finally, before the Conference closed, the group drew up and signed on November 23 statutes for a permanent international organization of employers.

The formation of the workers’ group was of even more natural development and required scarcely any preparation. The International Federation of Trade Unions had just been successfully reconstituted at Amsterdam, and had taken a leading part in the negotiations in regard to the admission of Germany and Austria which preceded the Conference. Its authority was so well established as to be beyond cavil or criticism. Indeed, it had even gone so far as to demand that all workers’ delegates should be chosen in agreement with the organizations affiliated with the Federation. In these circumstances, it was natural that the leaders of the Federation, who were themselves delegates to the Conference, should act in unison and at once set about organizing their fellow workers as a disciplined group.

On November 1, two days after the opening of the Conference, M. Mertens, as president of the workers’ group, informed the Secretary-General that M. Oudegeest had been appointed as its secretary. Like the employers’ group, it held regular meetings during the Conference, and submitted a series of group amendments to the Organizing Committee’s draft of the Hours Convention. As in the case of the employers, the workers’ nominations on committees and on the Governing Body were settled by discussion in the workers’ group.

It would be out of place to develop here the important part which these natural formations have since come to play in the working of the Organization. Though at times they have been subjected to criticism on the ground that they have introduced too large an element of discipline, and thus repressed individual expressions of opinion, on the other hand it is not open to doubt that without the collective expression of the employers’ and workers’ views during the discussions of the Conference, and the joint negotiations with a view to reaching agreement which they have made possible, the solutions of its problems would have been infinitely more arduous and their outcome less satisfactory. Moreover, the existence of the groups served to preserve and emphasize the essentially tripartite character of the Conference. The result has been that it has come to view the questions before it much less from a national point of view than from the point of view of their technical merits, and their bearing on the interests of those concerned in production.

The constitution of this Committee was another happy instance of the prevision exercised by the Organizing Committee. They foresaw the necessity of creating some supreme organ of the Conference, fully representative of its various groupings, to which all questions relating to its proceedings might be referred.

By this device lengthy debates on procedure were avoided, and it was possible to reach decisions as to the general conduct of the debates, the setting up of committees, and other general questions which could hardly have been settled expeditiously and satisfactorily in the full Conference. Here again an important precedent was established, which was to prove its value in future years and to become an essential feature of every the session of the Labour Conference.

Washington Conference 1919, Organizing Committee: in the center standing, Harold Butler and on his right hand Edward Phelan.

Finally, a word should be said as to the secretarial work of the Conference.

As the International Labour Office was not yet in existence, the secretariat was necessarily recruited in a somewhat haphazard fashion from such elements as were available. Some of its principal members had already acquired some international experience on the staffs of the Commission of the Peace Conference or of the Organizing Committee. Others were borrowed from the embryonic secretariat of the League, while the executive and material arrangements were mainly entrusted to the American personnel recruited on
the spot.

The central feature which distinguishes the secretariat of the Conference from those of previous international conferences is that while the higher officials were all drawn from different nationalities, the secretariat itself was organized not on national but on functional lines.

Naturally, very great difficulties were encountered in organizing a staff recruited at short notice from such heterogeneous elements into an efficient team. Nevertheless, the experience gained at Washington proved conclusively that it was possible to obtain loyal cooperation and a high standard of performance from an international staff.

As the Secretary-General remarked at the end of the Conference, the staff worked with great enthusiasm because they realized that they were assisting in a great movement and had shown by the success which had attended their efforts “that international cooperation may be as successful in the realm of administration as the Conference has shown it to be in the realm of legislation.”

The Governing Body

As will have been already gathered, one of the remarkable features of the Washington Conference was the manner in which it brought to light the major problems inherent in the aims and structure of the International Labour Organization. Not least among these problems was the treatment of the oversea countries. Before the War no extra-European country had taken part in the meetings convened under the auspices of the Association for International Labour Legislation. This was due partly to its purely European origin and inspiration, and partly to the comparatively slight development of industry in oversea countries with the exception of the United States, and even the United States was only beginning to export manufactured articles on a considerable scale. The tremendous demands for war material and the obstacles placed by war conditions in the way of sea transport had deprived the over-sea countries, during five years, of the greater part of the supplies which they had been accustomed to receive from European factories.

During that time many of them had come to develop industries capable of furnishing their own needs, while some of them, such as Japan and Canada, had been stimulated to produce goods for export, either in order to supply the belligerents, whose appetite for munitions of all kinds was practically unlimited, or to capture the over-sea markets, urgently demanding goods which the belligerents were no longer able to offer. In consequence, industrialism had made considerable strides during the War in the over-sea countries, particularly in Asia and America, and many of them had become alive to industrial and social problems, to which they had devoted little attention in the past. It was therefore natural that they should expect to play a larger part in the deliberations of the Conference and to figure more prominently in the principal committees.

During the Conference this issue came prominently to the front on two occasions: the first in connection with the appointment of the Commission to deal with migration, the second in connection with the election of the Governing Body.

The report of the Committee on Unemployment proposed, inter alia, the adoption of a resolution recommending the Governing Body to appoint a Commission to deal with migration problems. Mr. Gemmill, the delegate of the employers of South Africa, moved an amendment on November 25 proposing that “the representation of the States on the European Continent on the Commission should be limited to one half of the total membership of the Commission.” He justified this motion by pointing out that migration was a question that affected both European and oversea countries equally, and that the latter’s interests were consequently quite as much at stake as those of the former. The amendment was eventually carried and represented the first indication of the part which the oversea countries were determined to play in the life of the Organization.

This motion, however, would possibly not have been pressed with so much vigor, had the election of the Governing Body fallen out differently. That election had been announced in the Conference on November 25. It was the result of long discussions and negotiations in the Selection Committee, where the oversea countries had claimed considerably more places than they eventually secured. In the case of the government group, eight of the twelve places available were already assigned by the Treaty to the eight States of chief industrial importance. Among these, Japan and the United States were the only oversea countries included in the list proposed by the Organizing Committee. The Indian Delegation therefore protested, claiming that India was entitled to inclusion as of right in the list, and their first delegate, Mr. Louis Kershaw, declined to take part in the election until the Council of the League had pronounced on the Indian objection. There remained four governments to be elected by the government delegates present at the Conference, with the exception of those representing the eight States chief industrial importance. This election resulted in Argentina, Canada, Poland, and Spain being chosen to fill the vacant places. It was also recommended that in the event of a vacancy occurring Denmark should take the vacant place, a proviso intended to meet the situation which would arise if the United States did not ratify the Treaty.

Thus, four out of the twelve government seats were filled by oversea representatives in the first instance. At a later date, when the Council of the League drew up an official list of the eight States of chief industrial importance, it included not only India but also Canada, a fact which lent some color to the sense of ill-treatment which was prevalent among the oversea delegates at Washington.

Although attempts had been made to secure a measure of oversea representation in the employers’ group, that group in fact nominated six European representatives, while the workers’ group, which disclaimed nationality as a basis for selection at all, appointed five Europeans and one Canadian to represent it in the Governing Body.

The first meeting of the Governing Body, which was held on 27-28 November 1919, therefore comprised twenty European members out of twenty-four. This result provoked a vigorous protest from the oversea delegates, which was finally crystallized in the form of a resolution presented by Mr. Gemmill and supported by a large number of over-sea delegates, expressing “its disapproval of the composition of the Governing Body of the International Labour Office inasmuch as no less than 20 of the 24 members of that body are representatives of European- countries.” Arthur Fontaine on the other hand claimed that the title of countries to membership of the Governing Body should be determined not by considerations of geographical distribution, but by their industrial development and experience, and by the importance of their industrial interests.

When the question was put to the vote, the Conference was very evenly divided. Mr. Gemmill’s motion was adopted by forty-four votes to thirty-nine, the majority being composed of thirty-five oversea delegates, including the workers’ delegates from Guatemala, India, Japan, Peru, and South Africa, together with nine European votes. The minority consisted, with one exception, of European delegates, but most of the workers’ delegates and a number of other delegates abstained from voting.

Moreover, Mr. Gemmill’s initiative at Washington proved to be the starting point for an amendment of Article 393 of the Treaty itself in order to give better representation to the oversea countries.

Nevertheless, despite the differences which had arisen in connection with the distribution of seats, the Conference proceeded to constitute the Governing Body, which thereupon sat for the first time at Washington. This was a step of immense importance in initiating the work of the Organization. It was felt, particularly by the workers’ group, to be imperative that the International Labour Office should be created as soon as possible, if the continuity and development of the work of the Conference was to be assured. The Office could not be created, however, until a Director was appointed, and the Director could only be appointed by the Governing Body. There is no doubt that the view taken by the workers’ group was both sound in itself and justified in the event. When it met for the first time in November 27, the Governing Body elected Mr. Arthur Fontaine as its first Chairman, and Mr. Albert Thomas as provisional Director of the Office. By these two decisions, which were announced on the last day but one of the Conference, the future of the Organization was, as it proved to be, amply assured. Mr. Fontaine’s appointment as Chairman was clearly indicated by his preeminent services at the Piece Conference as Chairman of the Organizing Committee, and as a delegate to the Conference, and for more than eleven years he guided the Governing Body on its way with unsurpassed ability and judgment.

Those who did not already know Mr. Albert Thomas’s brilliant qualities and forceful personality were quickly convinced on acquaintance with him that in his hands the Office would become a great instrument fitted to play the part assigned to it by the authors of the Treaty. Here again, the Washington Conference laid well and truly the foundations of the Organization.

The Achievement of the Conference

In assessing the achievement of the Washington Conference after an interval of thirteen years, one cannot but be struck by the sharpness with which it brought into relief the principal problems which have since been in the forefront of the preoccupations of the International Labour Organization. One is also struck by the vigor and directness with which the Conference proceeded to attack all of these problems and by the progress which it accomplished in preparing, in the short space of five weeks, the groundwork for their solution. It has moreover to be remembered that the constitutional and political issues which have been the subject of this chapter did not constitute the main work of the Conference. The greater part of its time was devoted to drawing up six conventions dealing with hours of work in industry, unemployment, the night work of women, the night work of young persons, the age of admission of children to industrial employment, and the employment of women before and after childbirth. In addition to these conventions, it adopted a series of no less than six recommendations and eight resolutions on aspects of the questions on the Agenda which were not thought suitable for treatment in the Conventions.

At the same time enthusiasm alone could not have enabled the Conference to deal with so large an Agenda. The careful planning of the authors of Part XIII of the Treaty and of the Organizing Committee must also be given a large share of the credit. They had devised a procedure inspired by a real understanding of the conditions necessary to success in international conferences. In the first place, the thoroughness with which the preparatory work was carried out alone made it possible to bring the discussion of the six main points on the Agenda to positive conclusions. The reports presented by the Organizing Committee enabled the delegates to appreciate from the start the extent to which general agreement already prevailed and thus to concentrate on the points which required detailed negotiation and compromise. As a result, the six Draft Conventions, which really laid the foundations of a code of international Labour legislation, were not only duly voted, but were subsequently ratified and put into effect to an extent which shows that they were sound and workmanlike documents. Every international conference since the War has illustrated the lesson that success depends largely upon the care and foresight with which the preliminary work is carried out and that without that indispensable condition failure is almost inevitable.

Indeed, the methods of procedure so successfully applied at Washington furnished a model on which later conferences held under the auspices of the International Labour Organization have operated. It may even be suggested without exaggeration that the degree of achievement of other international conferences has varied largely with the extent to which they followed or ignored the same methods. There is a technique of international discussion, which has to be learnt and which has to be applied by those who understand it. One of the merits of the Washington Conference is that it made a considerable contribution to the formation of such a technique. But good technique, essential though it was, would not by itself have enabled it to solve the many and various problems before it.

A Conference imbued with a lesser faith might well have shrunk from confronting so boldly some of the difficult problems about which decisions were reached at Washington. It might even have hesitated to take any action at all toward setting the permanent machinery of the Organization in motion, in view of the doubt as to the legal validity of the decisions of the Conference which brooded over its deliberations from the beginning to the end. The American Government had emphasized the view that the Conference could have no legality in as much as the Treaty was not in operation. Indeed, Secretary Wilson had explained his final acceptance of the chairmanship on the ground that the Conference could have nothing but an unofficial character, and in his opening address he pointed out that the completion of the organization of the Conference could not take place until the League of Nations had been created and that the final technical steps had not yet been taken, although the creation of the League was then an assured fact. Had the Conference been less determined to brush aside all obstacles in the way of launching the first working part of the League of Nations, it might well have been dismayed by these juridical flaws in its mandate.

They were, in fact, twice discussed by the Selection Committee. Finally, the Governing Body recommended a solution proposed by Mr. Fontaine, which had the merit of being both simple and comprehensive, namely, that the Conference should, as proposed by the Organizing Committee, proceed in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty as if it were legally constituted, and should leave it to the discretion of the Governing Body to take any steps that might be necessary to make its decisions legally effective when the Treaty of Peace came into operation, the Governing Body accordingly being free to reconvene it or to declare it closed as it might think fit. This proposal commended itself to the Conference, which adopted it by the adequate majority of 73 votes to six.

The Governing Body, when it assembled at its second session in January 1920, experienced no great difficulty in cutting the legal knot. The legal adviser to the Conference had maintained the view that the Governing Body required to take no action. When the Governing Body met on January 26, 1920, it would be sufficient if it was considered that the Governing Body, in virtue of the authority delegated to it by the Conference, declared the Washington Session of the Conference closed. This course was accordingly recommended by the Director [Albert Thomas] to the Governing Body, when it met, was adopted unanimously without any prolonged discussion, and was duly notified to the States Members.

All the constitutional obstacles which barred the path of the Washington Conference were thus successfully surmounted. They could scarcely have been overcome, had not there existed a strong determination in all its component sections to achieve success at any cost, and to translate the provisions of Part XIII of the Treaty into a living reality without delay. That is perhaps the outstanding achievement of the Washington Conference, which gives it a special place in the history of the International Labour Organization, and which gives it something of the character of a constituent assembly.

Note:

1 The choice of French and English as official languages was contested at the 1919 Conference. Out of the 36 State Members present, 16 were Spanish speaking. Also the supporters of German voiced their claim, the political bias from wartime was at first a barrier. In the end in 1927 it was decided to adopt Spanish and German as languages of the ILC. (IE)

Before Versailles: the genesis of the ILO 1 By David A. Morse, Director-General 1948-1970

Let me begin with the Paris Peace Conference, which assembled in January 1919, two months after the armistice, which put an end to hostilities in the First World War.

At one of the first sessions, the Conference set up a Commission on International Labor Legislation, of which Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor, was chairman.

Some of the delegates may have thought it rather surprising that one of the first acts of the Peace Conference should relate to labor; but there was general recognition that the ferment and instability, which characterized the world of labor and industry in 1918 and 1919, particularly in Europe, called for immediate and constructive action.

The Commission, which was composed of representatives of nine countries2, had to deal with the important question of whether it should propose that there be included in the Peace Treaty a full-fledged Constitution of a Permanent International Labor Organization, or whether it should simply recommend the inclusion of a general declaration of principles, a sort of Labor Charter.

It finally decided to formulate the Constitution of an organization which would be designed to examine new problems of labor and industry as they arose and to assist in finding solutions for them. In addition, but only secondarily, it agreed to approve a list of general principles. The Commission’s report consisted of two parts, one containing the Constitution of the proposed International Labor Organization, including provisions concerning its relations with the League of Nations; the other, the list of general principles on labor matters.

The report was adopted by the Peace Conference during April 1919. Both parts were subsequently embodied in the Treaty of Versailles.

Although the Paris Peace Conference is remembered mainly for its short-lived policies and decisions on political and economic affairs, its main decision in the field of social policy – the establishment of the ILO – continues today to have a far-reaching impact on the world.

Before going on to describe the Constitution of the ILO, I should like to glance for a moment back into history.

By a curious historical coincidence, it was almost exactly a century before the Paris Conference that for the first time proposals for action in each nation to regulate conditions of labor were submitted to an international conference by the Welsh-Scottish industrialist, Robert Owen, at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. At the time, Owen was a voice crying in the wilderness, but the years that followed other employers’ advocated action to the same end, Hindley in England and Legrand in France.

It was their realization that efforts in the direction of national legislation to regulate conditions of labor would be impeded by the lack of coordinated international action in the field, which led Hindley, and Legrand in the 1830’s and 1840’s to advocate international labor treaties of conventions.

On the side of the workers, the International Working Men’s Association, the First International, formed in 1864, the Second International, formed in 1889, and the International Federation of Trade Unions, which traced its origins to a conference held in 1901 and which was formally constituted in 1913, all voiced in different ways the international aspirations of the workers to improve the lot of working men everywhere.

Berlin Conference 1890

Governments also, influenced by currents of economic and social thought in the nineteenth century, as well as pressures exerted by or on behalf of workers, had taken some action. In 1890, after earlier initiatives by Colonel Frey,
President of the Swiss Confederation, an international conference on conditions of labor was convened in Berlin by Chancellor Bismarck.

Thus, employers, workers, and governments all played a part, though separately, in the evolution of the concept of international action for the promotion of labor standards. All these initiatives had been inspired by men who were genuinely concerned with the hardships, which nineteenth-century industrialization and economic competition inflicted upon workers.

In 1900, very largely as a result of this growing “social conscience” in European countries, the International Association for Labor Legislation, a nongovernmental organization which received financial support from interested governments, was established. This organization, although its work had little immediate effect on national legislation, can be considered a direct forerunner of the ILO.

Near the end of the First World War, when Allied governments were making preparations for the Peace Conference, they had to take due account of the international workers’ conferences, held during the war in Leeds, Stockholm, and Berne, which urged and resolved that the terms of peace should ensure to the workers minimum guarantees in regards to labor legislation and trade union rights, in recognition of the signal services rendered during the war by the workers, both in the factories and on the battlefield.. All this explains why the Commission on International Labor Legislation was set up, at the Paris Peace Conference, and why the report of the Commission was unanimously adopted by the International Labour Conference.

_________________________

1 Extract from his Cornell Lectures, 1969. The complete series of Lectures were published under the title The Origin and Evolution of the ILO and Its Role in the World Community, New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, 1969.
2 Belgium, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, United Kingdom, United States. See James T. Shotwell, Origins of the International Labour Organisation, vol. 1, pp. 128-129. New York, Colombia 1934

The historic role of Germany in the ILO / Werner Sengenberger

There are two motivations for writing this article. The first is the rapidly approaching centennial of the International Labour Organisation which gives us all the more reason to review its history. Being cognizant of its past can be useful for the ongoing debate about its future. The second is the valuable amount of research on the ILO in recent years. This has included the case of Germany which shows in an “extreme situation” the pathways, mechanisms and limits of the internationalization of social policy.[1]

Clearly, Germany played an ambivalent role in the foundation and the subsequent evolution of the ILO. We witness light and darkness in Germany’s relationship with the organization, ideological convergence and divergence, and periods of association and dissociation.

On the positive side, with its concept of “Sozialstaat”[2] – designed to provide social security, social justice, social integration, and individual freedom for all of its citizens – and owing to its professional competence  in the areas of occupational safety and health, labour inspection, labour law and collective bargaining and industrial  relations, Germany made a significant contribution to the creation of the ILO and its central ideas, its system of international standards and its technical cooperation programmes. Germany played a pioneering role in social insurance policy. Beginning in 1883, it was first in Europe to adopt compulsory state insurance relating to old age, illness, invalidity, and industrial accidents.[3] Furthermore, Germany assisted in promoting the substantive agenda of the ILO in areas such as vocational education and technical training, occupational rehabilitation and cooperatives.

In 1890, an “International Conference for the Regulation of Work in Industrial Plants and Mines” was held in Berlin. It adopted resolutions on the introduction of minimum working standards in Europe, including minimum age, weekly rest, and the employment of children, young people and women. It has been regarded by some as the birth of international labour law and a forerunner of the ILO.

Since then, German government officials, trade unionists and academics were among the initiators and supporters of the International Association for Labour Legislation (IVGA), which formed the first International Labour Office in Basel in 1901. It is regarded as a precursor to the ILO. In the same year, a national German section of this Association called the “Gesellschaft für Soziale Reform” was set up in Bonn. Later, together with 25 other national affiliations, the German group participated in the activities of the International Association for Social Reform (1924-1933), whose first president was the ILO Director Albert Thomas.[4]

Although industrialization, and along with it the rise of the status of the employee, started later in Germany than in the United Kingdom and Belgium, the country gradually became one of the leading industrial nations in the second half of the 19^th century. It developed strong collective organizations of workers and employers. Next to the UK, it had the largest trade union movement in the decades before World War I. German unionists took up leading positions in the international trade union organisations. From 1903 up to WW one, Carl Legien chaired the International Trade Union Secretariat of European and North American unions and its successor organization, the International Trade Union Federation that was set up in 1913. The German trade union movement, and particularly its largest and most influential social democratic, reformist component, aroused the interest of Albert Thomas. As early as 1902, he established contact with the German labour movement when he was a student at the University of Berlin. In 1903, he wrote his doctoral thesis about the German version of socialism.

Structural affinity between the ILO and Germany is perhaps closest when it comes to tripartism as a model of governance. The involvement of representatives of interest groups of workers and employers in decision-making in social and economic policy has a long tradition in Germany. It has taken various forms and names, such as “social partnership”, “social market economy” (after WW II), and “concerted social action” (1967-77, relating to monetary, fiscal and incomes policy). Tripartite social dialogue at the federal, state and local level has been of vital significance in improving the country’s economic and employment performance. For example, during the recent financial crisis starting in 2008, when Germany’s GDP declined more than in most other EU countries, the loss of jobs and the rise of unemployment were marginal. Adjustment was accomplished largely through reducing working hours instead of layoffs. It helped to stabilize aggregate demand. As the costs of adjustment were shared fairly among workers, employers and the government, it facilitated a broad sense of confidence in the economy.[5]

Particularly in the years of the Weimar Republic of Germany (1918-1933), tripartism in the ILO was inspired by the national German practice of the equal participation of workers and employers (parity).[6] However, it is also evident, that the liberal model of tripartite rule which is congruent with ILO principles of freedom of association and independent interest groups has not been consistently applied in Germany. There were periods of authoritarian corporatism in which civil liberties and conflict resolution through negotiation and genuine social dialogue were suppressed and government ordinances put in their place. It happened most of all under Bismarck’s paternalism and the repressive Socialism Act of 1878, in the National Socialist (Nazi) era (1933-1945), and in the German Democratic Republic in east Germany (1949-1990).

In decisive phases of the development of the ILO in the years after World War I, and even more so after World War II, the German state stood largely outside the ILO, and the international community altogether. The nation’s capacity to contribute to institutionalizing international law was severely hampered by its role as aggressor in the two world wars and the chauvinist and racist posture of the Nazi regime that squarely contradicted the pluralistic spirit of the ILO. The formative years of the Organization in the 1920s were dominated by France and the United Kingdom. In addition to them, Belgium, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Japan, Poland and the United States were part of the Commission on International Labour Legislation of the Peace Conference in 1919 that negotiated the ILO’s first Constitution. As loser of World War I, and charged with the sole responsibility for this war in the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was excluded from the peace talks. It did not take part in the first International Labour Conference in Washington D.C in 1919 but joined the ILO only later that year, following the decision at the Second Sitting on 30 October to admit Germany and Austria as members.¹⁹ Granting it membership was demanded by the representatives of the employers and workers in the ILO and some governments, particularly Belgium. While the former were afraid that Germany with its large export sector might gain unfair advantages in international competition if it was not committed to observe the normative standards of the ILO, the latter requested and justified the integration by pointing to the strength of the German labour movement.[7]

Although Germany was not among founding nations of the ILO, it indirectly exerted political pressure on its inauguration. During and shortly after WW I, social unrest, strikes and revolutionary movements sprang up in Europe and even in North America, starting with the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, and followed by the establishment of temporary soviet republics in Hungary and Northern Italy. In Germany, political uprisings, called the November revolution started on November 4, 1918, when groups of workers in the North joined the navy to call for an overthrow of the government and a new political order in the country. The following day, revolts by workers and soldiers spread to Munich, Berlin, and other big cities, leading to the formation of (short lived) worker republics and the foundation of the communist party. In early 1919, the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George wrote to the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau: “The whole of Europe is filled with the spirit of revolution. There is a deep sense, not only of discontent, but anger and revolt among the workmen, against pre-war conditions. […] The whole existing order in its political, social and economic aspects [is] questioned by the masses of the population from one end of Europe to the other”.[8] Setting up the ILO in this crisis ridden situation may be seen as an attempt by a coalition of the reformist political left and conservative governments to thwart the revolution and stabilize the economic system by securing the loyalty of the labour force trough an international social reform programme.

Despite the marginal role of the German government in the ILO in the inter-war period, the country was not without influence in the Organization during that time, thanks to exchanges and collaboration drawn from institutional, personal and technical relationships. Most important among the links was the ILO Branch Office in Berlin set up in 1921, and closed down in 1934. It was headed by Alexander Schlicke (1921-25) and Wilhelm Donau (1925-34), both social democrats. Both promoted the cause of the ILO in Germany and cooperated closely with the Ministry of Labour for that purpose.[9]

Marius Viple, Albert Thomas ahnd Wilhelm Donau in Berlin

In the early 1920s, some German officials of the ILO, working in Geneva and/or at the Branch Office in Berlin, faced a severe conflict of loyalty. They were torn between their duties as international civil servants and the defence of national interests as German citizens. The conflict intensified between 1923 and 1925, when the officials voiced opposition in public to the hardships suffered by workers in the Ruhr and the Saar districts because of reparations imposed on Germany under the Peace Treaty of Versailles. They thought the ILO was wrong to acquiescide to this situation. According to Sandrine Kott[10], these events contributed to the inclusion of the rule in the Staff Regulations of the ILO which requires from the officials to show exclusive loyalty to the Organization, and not to seek or receive instructions from any national authority in regard to the execution of their duties.[11]

Hitler Germany terminated membership in the League of Nations and the ILO. The withdrawal was declared in November of 1933 and became official in 1935. Yet, the disruption of the links between the Third Reich and the ILO was not as abrupt and complete as one might expect in view of the intolerant and racist complexion of the Nazi regime. It progressed step-by-step along with the imposition of full dictatorship. Among the first casualties of the new regime was freedom of association. The German trade unions were disbanded in May 1933. Their premises were occupied and leading unionists sent to concentration camps. A mandatory organization, called the “German Labour Front” (DAF) replaced them with the sole task of implementing the will of the Nazi government. The employers’ organizations were also banned and merged into the DAF as a way of “overcoming class struggle”. At the International Labour Conference in June 1933, Nazi representatives led by Robert Ley, chief of the DAF, demanded the mandate of the unions. However, the ILC refused to issue credentials to the new “worker delegation”, which then left the Conference. To gain legitimacy and acceptance, the Nazi delegation had tried in vain to win over Wilhelm Leuschner, board member of the German General Trade Union Confederation (ADGB), a social democratic politician -and ADGB delegate to the ILC.

Wilhelm Leuschner at the 61^st Session of the Governing Body in June 1933

Because of his refusal to collaborate, Leuschner was arrested immediately after his return from Geneva to Germany. Later, he became part of the German resistance movement. He was sentenced to death and executed in September 1944.[12]

From the point of view of ILC delegates and among some ILO staff members (mainly German), there were divergent attitudes towards the maintenance of relations with Nazi Germany. At least until 1935, the ILO under its Director Harold Butler was willing to make compromises with the new regime. The German government demanded and in fact achieved the dismissal of some German experts and ILO staff members seen as being “unreliable”. To some extent, the conciliatory position of the ILO was related to the social policy stance of the Nazis. It put emphasis on (a contrived version of) social peace, the fight against unemployment, paid vacation, the extension of maternity protection, and the provision of recreational opportunities for workers (“Kraft durch Freude”). Like other fascist regimes in Europe, the Nazis tried, not entirely without success, to legitimize internationally their “superior” welfare policy, export it to other countries, and instrumentalize the ILO for these purposes. It was not until 1941 that the International Labour Office finally condemned the social policy of the Nazis as “totalitarian”.[13] By then, it had become entirely clear that the policy had been put at the service of Germany’s imperial ambitions. In May of 1941, Robert Ley of the German Labour Front tried to get the Swiss authorities to occupy the ILO premises in Geneva.[14] By that point, the Office was already installed in Montreal where it had been relocated in 1940.

West Germany, i.e. the Federal Republic of Germany, re-entered the ILO in 1951. In the presence of Director-General David A. Morse, an ILO Branch Office was established in Bonn and the German Government declared acceptance of the 17 ILO Conventions ratified by Germany before it had left the ILO.[15] The German Democratic Republic in the East joined the ILO in 1973, the same year in which each of the two German states became members of the United Nations. Hence, they were not part of the international community when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was passed in 1948 and the two Covenants in 1966: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both containing provisions of importance for international labour standards.

Francis Blanchard with F.G. Seib at a meeting in Germany

After the World War II, the ILO was one of the first international organizations that helped to pave the way for Germany back into the international community. Two eminent French members of the ILO Governing Body were advocating and helping to achieve Germany’s return to the ILO. On the workers’ side, the trade unionist Léon Jouhaux was a driving force behind the reconciliation between the French and German labour forces and Germany’s re-entry into the ILO. Jouhaux held a leading post in the CGT, before he left to establish the Force Ouvrière and became its president in 1947. He was also vice-president of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1951. On the employers’ side, Pierre Waline, a leading member of the  employers organization in France and president of the International Employers’ Organization (IOE) from 1953 intervened in favour of improved relations between France and Germany. He was awarded the German Great Distinguished Services Cross (“Grosses Bundesverdienstkreuz”.[16]

In the second half of the 20^th century, Germany’s role in the ILO became much more constructive. With few exceptions, the German government and the German organizations of employers and workers have been among the staunch supporters of the Organization’s core policies, notably on employment and decent work. They played an important role in shaping the policy of the European Union in relation to the ILO. The German federal government made sizeable financial and staff contributions to the technical cooperation activities of the organization. In 1992, it allocated 50 million Deutschmarks to launch the International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), which later on became the largest technical cooperation programme of the Office. Special funding was provided by Germany for ILO projects under the World Employment Programme in Africa, economic and social restructuring in Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and ILO country programmes for decent work. After the United States and Japan, Germany became the largest financial contributor of the organization.

In recent decades, Germany increasingly took part in the governance and leadership of the ILO. Since 1954, it has been a permanent member in the Governing Body. In 1976-77, Winfried Haase from the Federal Government was elected chairman of the GB, the first German in this important post. Gerd Muhr from the German Trade Union Federation was elected chairman of the GB in 1990 and the German government representative, Ambassador Dr Ulrich Seidenberger is chairman of the Body in the present period of 2016-17. The ILO Regional Office for Europe had several German directors. We have not yet seen a German at the helm of the International Labour Office. Presumably because of the heavy responsibility of the nation for the political devastations in the 20^th century, the German government has not proposed a national candidate for the post of Director-General so far. Rightly so, I would say, also in view of the disproportionally large number of European citizens who have occupied this position.

To sum up, Germany had its share in the prehistory of the ILO and thereafter. It may be counted as one of the influential reference points for ILO policies and programmes, thanks to its contributions to the emergence and development of international labour legislation, labour inspection and social security policy, and furthermore, the comparatively large and well organized collective organizations of workers and employers and the accommodating relations between them. The concept of tripartism in the governance system of the ILO corresponds to, and has been inspired by, the German tradition of social partnership in labour market and social policy. Nevertheless, Germany was not a leading player in the ILO during the most innovative years of the Organisation, mainly because of the country’s aggresion and defeat in the two world wars and the racism and crimes of the Nazi regime that were incompatible with the universal and humanist orientation of the ILO. Germany was absent from the organization at times when the guiding principles and some of the most important constitutional elements of the organization, including the Declaration of Philadelphia, were adopted. It became a fully committed ILO member in the second half of the 20^th century. It has been supportive of the Organization’s policies, generous in its contributions to the technical work of the Office, and largely respectful of inter-national labour standards. Nevertheless, Germany has yet to make considerable efforts to turn the country into a paradise of decent work for all.

[1] Kott, Sandrine : Dynamiques de l’internationalisation: L’Allemagne et l’Organisation internationale du travail (1919-1940), Critique Internationale, 2011/3, No. 52, p. 72

[2] Kott, Sandrine : Der Sozialstaat. In: Deutsche Erinnerungsorte II, Etienne Francois und Hagen Schulze Hrsg., Verlag C.H. Beck, 2009, pp.485-501.

[3] for details, see Kott, 2011/3,   op. cit., pp. 78-79; and the chapter on social protection in Rodgers, G. et al, The ILO and the quest for social justice, 1919-2009, ILO, Geneva, 2009, pp. 141-144

[4] Schewe, Dieter : Initiativen und Unterstützung für die Internationale Arbeitsorganisation durch die Gesellschaften für Soziale Reform/Sozialer Fortschritt 1890-1993, in: Weltfriede durch soziale Gerechtigkeit. 75 Jahre Internationale Arbeitsorganisation. Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Sozialordnung, Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbände, Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (Hrsg.), Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden, 1994, p. 37ff

[5] International Institute for Labour Studies : Germany: A Job-Centred Approach, Studies on Growth with Equity, ILO, Geneva, 2011, pp. 2-3 and chapter 8.

[6] Guerin Denis : op.cit., p.31.

¹⁹ J.T. Shortwell, The Origins of the International Labour Organisation, 2 vol., New York 1934, I, pp. 260 ff.

[7] Admission de l’Allemagne et de l’Autriche dans l’Organisation permanente du Travail, Genève, BIT, 1920.

[8] quoted in Rees, J. : “In defence of October” in: International Socialism, 52, Autumn 1991, London, p. 9.

[9] Kott, 2011, op. cit., pp. 74-75.

[10] Ibid., p.77.

[11] see Articles 7 of the ILO Staff Regulations, January 1923.

[12] for a detailed account see Tosstorff, Reiner : Workers’ resistance  against Nazi Germany at the International Labour Conference 1933, ILO, Geneva 2013.

[13] Kott, 2011, op. cit. p. 82; Waelbroeck, P. and Bessling I. : Some Aspects of Social Policy under the National Socialist Regime, In: International Labour Review, February 1941, pp. 127-152.

[14] for details about the relationship between the ILO and the Nazis, see Kott, 2011, op. cit., pp. 72 and 80-83.

[15] for details see Seib, Friedrich Georg : The ILO Office in Germany, In: MESSAGE no. 34, 2003.

[16] see  Erdmann, E.- G. :  Deutschlands Mitgliedschaft in der IAO – Ein Reflex seiner Geschichte 1919 – 1933 –

1951, In: Bundesministerium für Arbeit und

Sozialordnung, et. al., op. cit., pp. 28 and 34.