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Economic Regionalism and Social Stabilisation: the International Labour Organization and Western Europe in the Early Post-War Years

2013; Routledge; Volume: 35; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07075332.2013.813569

1949-6540

Lorenzo Mechi,

International Labor and Employment Law

AbstractThe International Labour Organization (ILO) played a concrete role in shaping the mechanisms of international economic co-operation created in Western Europe in the early post-war years. Its tripartite composition and orientation towards social dialogue were perfectly in tune with the productivist principles sponsored by the United States after the Second World War, which largely permeated European economic integration. Thanks to its solid know-how in the field, the ILO made a key contribution in promoting labour mobility, by helping the organisation and co-ordination of national employment services and vocational training systems and, most of all, by assisting institutions such as the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) and the European Communities in implementing freedom of circulation between their member countries. At the same time, in the mid-1950s it offered theoretical support to the economic liberalism on which the European common market was being modelled, arguing against claims for social harmonisation as a precondition to economic integration, and thus contributing to giving European co-operation the shape which still characterises it today.Keywords: International Labour Organizationpost-war Western EuropeEuropean economic integration Notes1. Similar considerations in J. Van Daele, ‘The International Labour Organization (ILO) in Past and Present Research’, International Review of Social History, liii (2008), 485–511.2. See the section of the ‘ILO Century Project’ on the ILO's website: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/century/index.htm3. But during the whole period of the bipolar conflict several studies have been published on the relations of the ILO with the United States and, to a minor extent, the USSR.4. See for example G. Rodgers, E. Lee, L. Swepston, and J. Van Daele, The ILO and the Quest for Social Justice, 1919–2009 (Geneva, 2009), especially 37–91 and 171–204; D. Roger Maul, Human Rights, Development and Decolonization. The International Labour Organization, 1940–70 (Basingstoke, 2012).5. A meaningful example has been the ‘West Meets East: The International Labor Organization from Geneva to the Pacific Rim’ international conference, held in Santa Barbara in February 2011: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/labor/papers.htm. A detailed overview of the evolution of the ILO's technical assistance from the war until the 1980s is in V.-Y. Ghebali, The International Labour Organisation: a Case Study on the Evolution of U.N. Specialised Agencies (Dordrecht, 1989), 242–67.6. See for example T. Cayet, Rationaliser le travail, organiser la production: le Bureau International du Travail et la modernisation économique durant l’entre-deux-guerres, and most of the contributions in I. Lespinet-Moret and V. Viet (eds), L’Organisation Internationale du Travail. Origines, développement, avenir (Rennes, 2011) and J. Van Daele, M. Rodriguez Garcia, G. van Goethem, and M. van der Linden (eds), ILO Histories. Essays on the International Labour Organization and its Impact on the World during the Twentieth Century (Bern, 2010). In this book an exception is I. Goddeeris, ‘The Limits of Lobbying: ILO and Solidarnosc’, 423–41.7. D. Kévonian, ‘Les réfugiés européens et le Bureau International du Travail: appropriation catégorielle et temporalité transnationale (1942–1951)’ in A. Aglan, O. Feiertag, and D. Kévonian (eds), Humaniser le travail. Régimes économiques, régimes politiques et Organisation internationale du travail (1929–1969) (Bruxelles, 2011), 167–94; S. Kott, ‘De l’assurance à la sécurité sociale (1919–1944). L’OIT comme acteur international’, online publication, website of the ILO Century Project.8. Rodgers et al., The ILO, 30.9. The two basic aims of the organisation are regularly stressed by the specialised literature. See for example Ghebali, The International Labor Organization, 2–3, and Rodgers et al., The ILO, 1–10.10. S. Schirmann, ‘Albert Thomas, il BIT e i progetti di Europa sociale fra le due guerre’ in L. Mechi and A. Varsori (eds), Lionello Levi Sandri e la Politica sociale europea (Milan, 2008), 119–32; D. Guérin, Albert Thomas au BIT, 1920–1932. De l’internationalisme à l’Europe (Geneva, 1996), 61–70.11. On Briand's project see J. Bariety (ed), Aristide Briand, La Société des Nations et l’Europe: 1919–1932 (Strasbourg, 2007), and A. Fleury (ed), Le Plan Briand d’Union fédérale européenne: perspectives nationales et transnationales (Bern, 1998).12. Commission of Enquiry for European Union, ‘Memorandum by the International Labour Office’, ILO Official Bulletin, xvi (1931), 34–8.13. Ibid.14. See the text and debates on the ‘Resolution on Post-War Emergency and Reconstruction Measures’, proposed jointly by the US government, workers, and employers’ representatives, in International Labour Conference (ILC), Record of proceedings, 1941, New York and Washington D.C., 135–39, 163. On the social expectations of the European resistance and exiled groups, see W. Lipgens, Documents on the History of European Integration, vols I and II (Berlin and New York, 1984 and 1986), passim.15. The numerous documents collected in the Historical Archives of the ILO in Geneva, P[ost]-W[ar] R[econstruction] fund show very similar ideas on ‘social’ reconstruction in the European countries. Some meaningful examples: Note sur l’étude des problèmes se rapportant à la restauration de la Belgique après la guerre, Jan. 1941, PWR f. 1–7; Declaration by the Polish Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, 15 Dec. 1942, PWR f. 1–50; The Study of Reconstruction in the Field of Social Policy, sent by the Czechoslovak Minister of Social Welfare to the ILO Director General, 19 April 1943, PWR f. 1–17; La reconstruction sociale du Grand-duché de Luxembourg, Nov. 1943, PWR f. 1–40. The text of the Atlantic Charter is available, for example, on the website of the Avalon Project of Yale University: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/.16. Text of R71, ‘Employment (transition from war to peace) Recommendation’, on NORMLEX section of ILO website: www.ilo.org/normlex. The debates are in ILC, 26th session, Philadelphia, 1944, Record of Proceedings, 352–68 and 602–16. An explicit connection between the ‘manpower policy’ of Recommendation 71 and the general commitment to a ‘full employment policy’ in the post-war period is in ‘The Twenty-sixth Session of the International Labour Conference’, International Labour Review, l, no. 1 (July 1944), 1–39.17. See the debates on the different parts of Recommendation R71 in the Employment Committee and the opening speech of Secretary of Labour Frances Perkins, in ILC, 26th session, 1–2, 241–52, and 352–68, where the role of the US government's members emerges clearly. The definition cited is from C.S. Maier, ‘The Politics of Productivity: Foundations of American International Economic Policy after World War II’, International Organization, xxxi, no. 4 (Autumn 1977), 607–33. On British politics during the war J. Harris, ‘Great Britain: the People's War?’ in D. Reynolds, W.F. Kimball, and A.O. Chubarian (eds), Allies at War. The Soviet, American and British experience, 1939–1945 (New York, 1994), 233–59. On technology and human factors as ingredients of ‘productivism’ see the interesting case study provided by P. Tedeschi, ‘Notes on the Marshall Plan in Lombardy. Technological innovation and vocational training’ in F. Fauri and P. Tedeschi (eds), Novel Outlooks on the Marshall Plan. American Aid and European Re-Industrialization (Brussels, 2011), 59–90.18. On Marshall Plan's philosophy see J. Gillingham, ‘Background to Marshall-Plan's Technical Assistance: Productivism as American Ideology’ in D. Barjot (ed), Catching up with America. Productivity Missions and the Diffusion of American Economic and Technological Influence after the Second World War (Paris, 2002), 53–65 and A. Carew, Labour under the Marshall Plan. The Politics of Productivity and the Marketing of Management Science (Manchester, 1987), 40–6, 80–91, 158, and passim.19. A political biography of David Morse is in D.R. Maul, ‘The “Morse Years”: the ILO 1948–1970’ in Van Daele et al., ILO Histories, 365–400.20. The creation of the ILO as a tool to counter the Bolshevik revolution is widely stressed in the literature; see for example R.W. Cox, ‘Labor and Hegemony’, International Organization, xxxi, no. 3 (Summer 1977), 385–424.21. David Morse to William Green, 31 Jan. 1949, [HAILO, Cabinet files, David Morse Papers], file Z 11-10-2. The marked ‘pro-Western’ orientation of the ILO in the early cold-war years is also stressed in A. Alcock, History of the International Labour Organisation (London, 1971), 210–11.22. ILC, 30th session, Geneva, 1947, Record of Proceedings, 590.23. Jacques Maillet to Marius Viple, 4 Sept. 1947, HAILO, Z1-1-1-11 (j. 4).24. ‘Manpower report of the Committee of European Economic Co-operation’, International Labour Review, lvi, n. 5–6, Nov.­–Dec. 1947, 566–75. A ‘real time’ synthesis of the Marshall Plan which specifically stresses its targets in terms of manpower distribution (and mentions the ILO's role), is ‘The European Recovery Program’, International Conciliation, n. 436, Dec. 1947, 803–4, 818 and 824.25. Comité de coopération économique européenne, Conférence de la main-d'oeuvre, Rome, janvier-février 1948, Rapports (Paris, 1948), 24–7 and 71–4. On the post-war problems of European manpower, the Rome conference and the creation of EMICO see Federico Romero, Emigrazione e integrazione europea, 1945–1973 (Rome, 1991), 29–47.26. ILO, Minutes of 104th session of the Governing Body, March 1948, 54.27. ‘ILO Service Abroad will Help Industry’, New York Times, 6 Feb. 1949. On the general characters of the programme: ‘The ILO Manpower Programme’, International Labour Review, lix, no. 4 (April 1949), 367–93, and the synthetic description after the first year of activity in ILC, 32nd session, Geneva, 1949, Report of the Director-General, 129–35.28. ILC, 33rd session, Geneva, 1950, Report of the Director-General, 114.29. ILO, Minutes of 104th session…, 49–61 and 201–4.30. A complete description of the ILO activities in technical assistance is in the report to the ILC, 37th session, Technical Assistance, Geneva, 1954.31. See ‘The ILO and Migration Problems’, International Labour Review, lxv, no. 2 (1952), 163–83, and two letters by Jef Rens to David Morse of 12 March 1953 and 1 Oct. 1954, both in HAILO, Z 1-1-1-16. One of the best syntheses of the whole story is in Alcock, History, 220–35. The mentioned 1949 Convention is C97 ‘Migration for employment’, NORMLEX website.32. Technical Assistance, 3–9 and 23–4.33. Communauté Européenne du Charbon et de l’Acier, Groupe de Travail pour l’application de l’article 69, Rapport à la Haute Autorité, Oct. 1953, and the proceedings of the group's sittings in the second half of 1953, all in H[istorical] A[rchives] of the E[uropean] U[nion], [fond of the ECSC High Authority] CEAB, f. 11 /392.34. ‘Note relative aux travaux effectués, à ce jour, en vue de l’élaboration du système de classification des professions de la Communauté du Charbon et de l’Acier’, annex to the letter from Francis Blanchard to Giuseppe Glisenti, Chief of the Division of Labour Problems of the ECSC High Authority, 20 Jan. 1954. See also the numerous reports sent by De Boer to Blanchard about his mission. All in HAEU, [fond of the European Commission] BAC, f. 1/1970, f. 477.35. X. Lannes, ‘International Mobility of Manpower in Western Europe: II’, International Labour Review, lxxiii, Jan.–June 1956, 135–51 (especially 143–4). On the application of freedom of circulation in the EEC framework: J. Degimbe, La politique sociale européenne. Du Traité de Rome au Traité d’Amsterdam (Brussels, 1999), 62–70.36. A synthesis of the creation and early activities of the ECSC adaptation fund is in René Leboutte, Histoire économique et sociale de la construction européenne (Brussels, 2008), 619–37. On the birth and early applications of the European social fund (and its inspiration by the ECSC fund) see L. Mechi, ‘Les États membres, les institutions et les débuts du Fonds Social Européen’ in A. Varsori (ed), Inside the European Community: Actors and Policies in the European Integration (1957–1972) (Baden Baden, 2006), 95–116.37. A synthesis of the ILO's assistance to the European international organisations on social-security matters in the 1950s and 1960s is in H. Creutz, ‘The ILO and Social Security for Foreign and Migrant Workers’, International Labour Review, iiic, no. 4 (1968), 351–69. More specifically on the collaboration with the European Communities see ECSC, High Authority, 3rd and 6th General Reports on the Activity of the Community (Luxemburg, 1955 and 1958), respectively 175–6 and 184–6, and the speeches of the EEC Commission representative in ILC, Record of Proceedings, 1960 (323–5), 1964 (175–7), and 1967 (161–3), following the approval of different EEC regulation.38. International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, Committee on Social Integration, Preliminary Report on Problems of European Social Integration, 4–5 Jan. 1955, A[rchives] of the I[nternational] I[nstitute] of S[ocial] H[istory], papers of the E[uropean] T[rade] U[nions] C[onfederation], f. 312.39. On this last aspect see Jef Rens’ considerations, which exactly present the unions’ activity in the ILO as an answer to the employers’ hostility: Jef Rens to David Morse, 13 April 1953, HAILO, Z 1-1-1-16. A synthesis on the US employers’ attitude towards the organisation during the witch-hunting years, is in Maul, ‘The Morse Years’. See also the meaningful intervention by Herman Patteet, ICFTU permanent representative in Geneva, in ILC, 36th session, Geneva, 1953, Record of Proceedings, 14–16. Non-Communist trade unions’ support of European integration, and their early attempts to get involved, are described in the essays collected in A. Ciampani (ed), L’Altra via per l’Europa. Forze sociali e organizzazione degli interessi nell’integrazione europea (1947–1957) (Milan, 1995).40. See the memo ‘Problèmes relatifs à l’OIT’, sent by N. De Bock, Secretary-General of the Fédération Générale du Travail de Belgique, to Hans Gottfurcht, Assistant Secretary-General of the ICFTU, 3 Nov. 1953, AIISH, papers of the I[nternational] C[onfederation] of F[ree] T[rade] U[nions] f. 1998b (orig. French). On the first proposal to convene a European regional conference and the subsequent debate see ILO, Minutes of the 118th session of the Governing Body, Geneva, March 1952, 14–20.41. On the action in the Council of Europe: Rapport sur ma mission à Strasbourg (suite au rapport de M. Fano), sent by Fano to Alvarado, Morellet and Rens, 8 Oct. 1952 (where the commitment by French representatives emerges clearly), and the communication Strictly Confidential – Points to be Born in Mind by the Director-General in his talks with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Labour and the Chairman of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, sent by Jef Rens to David Morse, 19 Oct. 1954. On the action of Brussels Treaty Organisation in the field of social charges see the confidential communication sent by Gilbert Sauvage to David Morse, 19 Oct. 1954, where the number of new ratifications by the five member states is also shown. The three documents are in HAILO, Z 15-3-1.42. On the agenda of the European Regional Conference and its importance in order to reaffirm the ILO's centrality on the European social problems, see the debate in ILO, Minutes of the 123rd Session of the Governing Body, Geneva, 24–27 Nov. 1953, 31–41 and 108–11 (Vermeulen's citation is at p. 34). See also the memo by Wilfried Jenks to the Director-General, 19 Aug. 1953, and the communication on ‘European regional conference’, sent by Edward Riches to David Morse, 16 Nov. 1953, both in HAILO, Z 10-3-10.43. Discussion du projet de rapport du Directeur Général à la Conférence régionale européenne, 8 Dec. 1953, HAILO, Z 10-1-7 (orig. French).44. One of the most meaningful moments was Mendès-France's speech of 20 Sept. 1954 before the Council of Europe assembly: Translation of the Remarks by Premier Mendès-France before the Council of Europe, presumably Oct. 1954, HAILO, Z 15-3-1. A general account of the French action on the problem of social charges is in L. Rye Svartvatn, ‘In Quest of Time, Protection and Approval: France and the Claims for Social Harmonization in the European Economic Community, 1955–56’, Journal of European Integration History, viii, no. 1 (2002), 85–102. See also the documents collected in G. Bossuat, Faire l’Europe sans défaire la France. 60 ans de politique d’unité européenne des gouvernements et des présidents de la République française (1943–2003) (Brussels, 2005), 323–76. For a synthetic description of western European politics in the mid 1950s see D. Dinan, Europe Recast. A History of European Union (Basingstoke, 2004), 57–79.45. Only after many years did it become a basic reference in the European practice, with the insertion of its principles in the EU treaties and the progressive strengthening of their binding value. See Council of Europe, European Social Charter: Collected Texts (Strasbourg, 2003), and the text of the Lisbon Treaty signed in 2007 by the EU member countries: http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/full_text/index_en.htm. A synthesis of the debates at the 1958 conference is in ‘Text of the Report on the Tripartite Conference Convened by the International Labour Organisation at the Request of the Council of Europe’ in ILO, Minutes of the 141st session of the governing body, Geneva, 10–13 March 1959, 89–91. The text of the agreement between the ILO and the Council of Europe is in ILO, Minutes of the 115st Session of the Governing Body, Geneva, 1–2 and 21–22 June 1951, 105–7.46. Meeting of Chiefs of Division to Discuss Revision of Chapter II of the Director-General's Report to the European Regional Conference, 29 Sept. 1954, HAILO, Z 10-1-7.47. ‘First European Regional Conference’, Industry and Labour, xiii, no. 8, (15 April 1955), 338–68.48. On the appointment of the ‘group of independent experts of the highest ranking’ see ILO, Minutes of the 128th Session of the Governing Body, Geneva, 1–4 March 1955, 18–19 and Minutes of the 129th Session of the Governing Body, Geneva, 27–28 May and 24 June 1955, 82–3. A short biography of Bertil Ohlin is on the website of the Nobel Prize (of which Ohlin was awarded in 1977): http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1977/ohlin.html. The Ohlin Report, whose official title is ‘Social Aspects of European Economic Co-operation. Report by a Group of Experts’ (Geneva, 1956), is published in Studies and Reports – New Series, no. 46; see especially 64–74, 84–91 and 111–18.49. ‘Social Aspects’, 89.50. ‘Social Aspects’, 73.51. ILO, Minutes of the 132nd Session of the Governing Body, Geneva, 1, 2 and 29 June 1956, 54–5.52. ‘Social Aspects’, 119–41.53. R.E.M. Irving, Christian Democracy in France (London, 2010), 72–4.54. S. Deakin, ‘Labour Law as Market Regulation: the Economic Foundations of European Social Policy’ in P. Davies, A. Lyon-Caen, S. Sciarra, and S. Simitis (eds), European Community Labour Law: Principles and Perspectives (Oxford, 1996), 62–93; J. Kenner, EU Employment Law (Oxford, 2003), 2–6. See also Conférence intergouvernementale pour le Marché Commun et l’Euratom, Extraits du Rapport des Chefs de délégation et du Rapport des six experts du Bureau International du Travail concernant les distorsions générales, les distorsions spécifiques et le rapprochement des législations, 1st Sept. 1956, HAEC, collections of the M[inistère] des A[ffaires] E[trangères] F[rançais], f. 602.55. First of all, A.S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State (London, 1992), 216.56. The general lines of European social policy in the 1970s are described in Degimbe, La politique sociale, 94–115 and 197–202. For focuses on specific aspects Mechi, ‘Les états membres’; A. Varsori (ed), Towards a History of Vocational Education and Training in Europe in a Comparative Perspective, CEDEFOP Panorama series, n. 101, 2004; A. Becherucci, ‘Prove di dialogo sociale: la Cee e le Conferenze tripartite degli anni settanta’ in I. Del Biondo, L. Mechi, and F. Petrini (eds), Fra mercato comune e globalizzazione. Le forze sociali europee e la fine dell’età dell’oro (Milan, 2010), 179–202.57. See the Conclusions of Lisbon European Council of March 2000 (‘Lisbon Strategy’) on the website European Navigator, http://www.ena.lu/, and the text of ‘Europe 2020’ strategy on the website of the European Commission, http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/index_en.htm.58. Rodgers et al., The ILO, 30.