Van Daele, Jasmien / Rodríguez García, Magaly / Van Goethem, Geert / Linden, Marcel van der (eds)
ILO Histories
Essays on the International Labour Organization and Its Impact on the World During the Twentieth Century
Series: International and Comparative Social History - Volume 12
(Bern, etc.: Peter Lang, 2010)
539 pp., 1 graph
ISBN 978-3-0343-0516-7 hb.
Book synopsis
In 2009, the International Labour Organization (ILO) celebrated its ninetieth anniversary. The First World War and the revolutionary wave it provoked in Russia and elsewhere were powerful inspirations for the founding of the ILO. There was a growing understanding that social justice, in particular by improving labour conditions, was an essential precondition for universal peace. Since then, the ILO has seen successes and set-backs; it has been ridiculed and praised. Much has been written about the ILO; there are semi-official histories and some critical studies on the organization's history have recently been published. Yet, further source-based critical and comprehensive analyses of the organization's origins and development are still lacking. The present collection of eighteen essays is an attempt to change this unsatisfactory situation by complementing those histories that already exist, exploring new topics, and offering new perspectives. It is guided by the observation that the ILO's history is not primarily about «elaborating beautiful texts and collecting impressive instruments for ratification» but about effecting «real change and more happiness in peoples' lives».
Contents
Jasmien Van Daele: Writing ILO Histories: A State of the Art
Elizabeth McKillen: Beyond Gompers: The American Federation of Labor, the Creation of the ILO, and US Labor Dissent
Ulla Wikander: Demands on the ILO by Internationally Organized Women in 1919
Reiner Tosstorff: Albert Thomas, the ILO and the IFTU: A Case of Mutual Benefit?
Patrick Pasture: The ILO and the Freedom of Association as the Ideal of the Christian Trade Unions
Jeremy Seekings: The ILO and Welfare Reform in South Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, 1919-1950
Sandrine Kott: Constructing a European Social Model: The Fight for Social Insurance in the Interwar Period
Pierre-Yves Saunier: Borderline Work: ILO Explorations onto the Housing Scene until 1940
Susan Zimmermann: «Special Circumstances» in Geneva: The ILO and the World of Non-Metropolitan Labour in the Interwar Years
Thomas Cayet: The ILO and the IMI: A Strategy of Influence on the Edges of the League of Nations, 1925-1934
Christophe Verbruggen: «Intellectual Workers» and Their Search for a Place Within the ILO During the Interwar Period
Stephen Hughes/Nigel Haworth: A Shift in the Centre of Gravity: The ILO under Harold Butler and John G. Winant
Geert Van Goethem: Phelan's War: The International Labour Organization in Limbo (1941-1948)
Jaci Leigh Eisenberg: Laquelle était la vraie France ? France and the ILO during the Second World War
aniel Roger Maul: The «Morse Years»: The ILO 1948-1970
Victoria Basualdo: The ILO and the Argentine Dictatorship (1976-1983)
Idesbald Goddeeris: The Limits of Lobbying: ILO and Solidarnosc
G.K. Lieten: The ILO Setting the Terms in the Child Labour Debate
Magaly Rodríguez García: Conclusion: The ILO's Impact on the World