Washington Shifts on ILO Conventions
SOBOL, NORMAN L.
Administration will back anti-forced-labor pact Washington Shifts Ground on ILO Conventions By Norman L. Sobol The United States will reverse a stand it has taken since the Eisenhower...
...favored a convention that would only outlaw international trade in the products of forced labor...
...Moreover, the U.S...
...is trying to encourage the growth of democratic ideals...
...The employers, for their part, must ask themselves whether their negative, obstructionist approach is of an\ value to themselves or their country...
...It even became known that certain Senators were prepared to hold public hearings and introduce resolutions to this effect in the Senate if the efforts within the Administration failed...
...ILO conventions are draft treaties...
...Thus, Washington is adopting a position urged by the American labor movement since 1947, when it first initiated action against forced labor in the United Nations Economic and Social Council...
...While Washington's agreement to support conventions at ILO conferences does not mean that it is prepared to ratify them, it is highly significant for at least two reasons: (1) It rejects the thesis of Senator John W. Bricker (R.-Ohio) and the employer delegates that such conventions are a threat to the U.S...
...employers are constantly threatening to quit the tripartite organization and demanding that Congress investigate it, and they have stirred up controversy over the seating of Communist "employer" delegates...
...This country is now in a position to vote for conventions in the ILO and other I N bodies...
...reduce its ILO financial support from 25 to 1.4 per cent of the agency's budget...
...In the past, private employers have rendered the Communists impotent by merely giving them "deputy membership...
...The Government is also expected to approve provisions which would outlaw the use of forced labor to punish strikers or discriminate against national, social, religious or racial groups...
...They feel that the overwhelming majority of ILO delegates, who favor them, should give up the "illusion" that conventions change anything...
...While the Government's new pro-convention approach represents a concession to the thinking of American labor and, perhaps, its own experts, Washington's evolving ILO policy has also produced a major concession to the employers...
...Thus, as the ILO's 40th annual conference is about to begin...
...Of the Western countries, Portugal is the only one that openly defends and practices it in its territories...
...AFL-CIO International Representative George P. Delaney, who is the U.S...
...It is even possible that the Senate may ratify these instruments as a normal international obligation if thev are wholly consistent with the Constitution, labor standards and our policies abroad...
...authorities announced a labor draft of dissident university students...
...worker-delegate to the ILO, devoted his efforts to convincing key legislators and Government officials that the switch was vital...
...If approved at the plenary session, this will mean that the employer group can completely exclude Communist "employers" from its committees...
...Under Secretary of Labor J. Ernest Wilkins, considered an apostle of caution in dealing with employer groups, described a recent C of C statement on the ILO as "not worth the paper it's written on...
...At first sight, therefore, "group autonomy" seems to be a useful parliamentary device which implements the ILO's essential principle of "free association...
...They further contend that the ILO staff is socialist and "slalist," that this sialism is part of the movement toward Communism, and that conventions appear to be part of the machinery of Bolshevism...
...The employers' annoyance at having to consort with managers of the Communist state-controlled industries is certainly understandable...
...employers can be counted on to exploit the issue as part of their effort to end U.S...
...Once adopted, they are placed on the following year's agenda for final approval...
...will favor "group autonomy...
...One official, however, feels that the worker and employer advisory committees on the ILO which are now being established will enable Government, worker and employer delegates to achieve a significant area of agreement...
...When the conference convenes, the U.S...
...In all, 77 countries belong to the ILO and each is represented by one employer delegate, one labor delegate and two Government delegates...
...In recent years, the Soviet Union has cut back its elaborate slave-labor system, but it still flourishes there as well as in Communist China...
...Their representatives are treated like "second-class citizens" at ILO meetings, they say...
...constitutional system, and it signals the realization that legal tactics are not a substitute for either genuine international law or a foreign policy which considers practical consequences...
...The workers' group, dominated by free trade-unionists, has handled its comparable problem democratically and organizationally...
...the C of C recommends that the U.S...
...They complain that they are most competent to instruct others in the economic facts of life, but no one will listen...
...The situation is further complicated by the fact that the U.S...
...The forced-labor convention, of course, is aimed at the Communist world...
...Forced labor also exists to a lesser degree in some African colonies and in various parts of Asia...
...The absence of the usual technical arguments against backing ILO conventions probably also made it easier for the State Department to accept the new policy...
...As might be expected, the NAM and C of C are violently opposed to ILO conventions...
...If they are accepted then by two-thirds of the delegates, member governments must submit them to their respective legislatures for ratification...
...2) It rejects the Old Guard theories embodied in the opposition of the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce—which together select the employer delegate—to the ILO...
...This was dramatically illustrated recently when Hungarian freedom fighters were carted off to slave-labor camps and when East German Norman Sobol is associated with the American Labor Services to the UN...
...Mitchell's success also demonstrates the influence of public opinion...
...He pressed for the new policy among all Government officials, including the President, and finally won Secretary of State John Foster Dulles's support despite the State Department's long-time opposition to such a change...
...Administration will back anti-forced-labor pact Washington Shifts Ground on ILO Conventions By Norman L. Sobol The United States will reverse a stand it has taken since the Eisenhower Administration came into office when the 40th annual International Labor Organization conference opens in Geneva on June 5. Its delegation will support a convention calling for the abolition of forced labor everywhere as an instrument of political coercion, economic development or labor discipline...
...Government and employer participation in the organization appears to be at the crossroads...
...Apparently, too, some Government officials recognized that it was impossible to justify do-nothing, legalistic attitudes on ILO issues to free trade-unionists, the democratic world, or areas where the U.S...
...But some astute observers of the organization's activities doubt its validity or political utility...
...financial support of the ILO and withdraw from membership...
...The employers would like lo "sell" their version of American capitalism...
...There would have been no shift in this approach now if not for the persistent efforts of Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell...
...The NAM bluntly doubts that "the ILO is in fact a constructive and useful agency...
...But at the 1956 ILO conference the U.S...
...This attitude has driven some of the Government officials responsible for ILO policy to the point of quiet desperation...
Vol. 40 • May 1957 • No. 21
