Trade unions

Over the course of World War I, the international labour movement proposed a comprehensive programme of protection for the working classes, conceived as compensation for labour's support of the war. This programme was supposed to become an international agreement after the war. In 1919, politicians took it up in order to give social stability to the postwar order. However, the way in which the programme was instituted disappointed the high expectations of trade unions. Politicians offered labour an institution that could attempt to achieve trade-union demands. Despite open disappointment and sharp critique, the revived International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), founded in 1913, quickly adapted itself to this mechanism. The IFTU increasingly oriented its international activities around the lobby work of the ILO.

Post-war reconstruction and the protection of labour unions occupied the attention of many nations during and immediately after World War I. In Great Britain, the Whitley Commission, a subcommittee of the Reconstruction Commission, recommended in its July 1918 Final Report that "industrial councils" be established throughout the world. The British Labour Party had issued its own reconstruction programme in the document titled Labour and the New Social Order. In February 1918, the third Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference (representing delegates from Great Britain, France, Belgium and Italy) issued its report, advocating an international labour rights body, an end to secret diplomacy, and other goals. And in December 1918, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) issued its own distinctively apolitical report, which called for the achievement of numerous incremental improvements via the collective bargaining process.

As the war drew to a close, two competing visions for the post-war world emerged. The first was offered by the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), which called for a meeting in Bern, Switzerland, in July 1919. The Bern meeting would consider both the future of the IFTU and the various proposals which had been made in the previous few years. The IFTU also proposed including delegates from the Central Powers as equals. Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL, boycotted the meeting, wanting the Central Powers delegates in a subservient role as an admission of guilt for their countries' role in the bringing about war. Instead, Gompers favoured a meeting in Paris which would only consider President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points as a platform. Despite the American boycott, the Bern meeting went ahead as scheduled. In its final report, the Bern Conference demanded an end to wage labour and the establishment of socialism. If these ends could not be immediately achieved, then an international body attached to the League of Nations should enact and enforce legislation to protect workers and trade unions.

Meanwhile, the Paris Peace Conference sought to dampen public support for communism. Subsequently, the Allied Powers agreed that clauses should be inserted into the emerging peace treaty protecting labour unions and workers' rights, and that an international labour body be established to help guide international labour relations in the future. The advisory Commission on International Labour Legislation was established by the Peace Conference to draft these proposals. The Commission met for the first time on 1 February 1919, and Gompers was elected chairman.

Two competing proposals for an international body emerged during the Commission's meetings. The British proposed establishing an international parliament to enact labour laws which each member of the League would be required to implement. Each nation would have two delegates to the parliament, one each from labour and management. An international labour office would collect statistics on labour issues and enforce the new international laws. Philosophically opposed to the concept of an international parliament and convinced that international standards would lower the few protections achieved in the United States, Gompers proposed that the international labour body be authorized only to make recommendations, and that enforcement be left up to the League of Nations. Despite vigorous opposition from the British, the American proposal was adopted.

Gompers also set the agenda for the draft charter protecting workers' rights. The Americans made 10 proposals. Three were adopted without change: That labour should not be treated as a commodity; that all workers had the right to a wage sufficient to live on; and that women should receive equal pay for equal work. A proposal protecting the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association was amended to include only freedom of association. A proposed ban on the international shipment of goods made by children under the age of 16 was amended to ban goods made by children under the age of 14. A proposal to require an eight-hour work day was amended to require the eight-hour work day or the 40-hour work week (an exception was made for countries where productivity was low). Four other American proposals were rejected. Meanwhile, international delegates proposed three additional clauses, which were adopted: One or more days for weekly rest; equality of laws for foreign workers; and regular and frequent inspection of factory conditions.

The Commission issued its final report on 4 March 1919, and the Peace Conference adopted it without amendment on 11 April. The report became Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles.

The first annual conference (referred to as the International Labour Conference, or ILC) began on 29 October 1919 at the Pan American Union (building) in Washington, D.C. and adopted the first six International Labour Conventions, which dealt with hours of work in industry, unemployment, maternity protection, night work for women, minimum age, and night work for young persons in industry. The prominent French socialist Albert Thomas became its first Director General. The ILO became the first specialized agency of the United Nations system after the demise of the League in 1946. Its constitution, as amended, includes the Declaration of Philadelphia (1944) on the aims and purposes of the organization.

In 1946 the ILO became the first specialized agency of the newly formed United Nations.

At the time of establishment, the U.S. government was not a member of ILO, as the US Senate rejected the Covenant of the League of Nations, and the United States could not join any of its agencies. Following the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the U.S. presidency, the new administration made renewed efforts to join the ILO even without League membership. On 19 June 1934, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution authorizing the President to join ILO without joining the League of Nations as a whole. On 22 June 1934, the ILO adopted a resolution inviting the U.S. government to join the organization. On 20 August 1934, the U.S. government responded positively and took its seat at the ILO.

In July 1970, the United States withdrew 50% of its financial support to the ILO following the appointment of an Assistant-Director General from the Soviet Union. This appointment (by the ILO's British Director-General, C. Wilfred Jenks) drew particular criticism from AFL-CIO president George Meany and from Congressman John E. Rooney. However, the funds were eventually paid.

On June 12, 1975, the ILO voted to grant the Palestinian Liberation Organization observer status at its meetings. Representatives of the United States and Israel walked out of the meeting. The U.S. House of Representatives subsequently decided to withhold funds. The United States gave notice of full withdrawal on November 6, 1975, stating that the organization had become politicized. The United States also suggested that representation from communist countries was not truly "tripartite"—including government, workers, and employers—because of the structure of these economies. The withdrawal became effective on November 1, 1977.

The United States returned to the organization in 1980 after extracting some concessions from the organization. It was partly responsible for the ILO's shift away from a human rights approach and towards support for the Washington Consensus. Writes economist Guy Standing: "the ILO quietly ceased to be an international body attempting to redress structural inequality and became one promoting employment equity".

Division of Labour is the specialisation of cooperative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and like roles. Historically, an increasingly complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialisation processes. Division of labour was also a method used by the Sumerians to categorise different jobs, trade, and economic interdependence. In addition to this, the division of labour helps to specialise and increase producer productivity.

The division of labour makes trade necessary and is the source of economic interdependence. Division of labour is a process whereby the production process is broken down into a sequence of stages and workers are assigned to particular stages.

There is a difference between division of labour and division of work.

There exist, as yet, few comprehensive studies of the global division of labor (an intellectual challenge for researchers), although the ILO and national statistical offices can provide plenty of data on request for those who wish to try.

In one study, Deon Filmer estimated that 2,474 million people participated in the global non-domestic labour force in the mid-1990s. Of these,

• around 15%, or 379 million people, worked in industry,

• a third, or 800 million worked in services, and

• over 40%, or 1,074 million, in agriculture.

The majority of workers in industry and services were wage & salary earners - 58 percent of the industrial workforce and 65 percent of the services workforce. But a big portion were self-employed or involved in family labour. Filmer suggests the total of employees worldwide in the 1990s was about 880 million, compared with around a billion working on own account on the land (mainly peasants), and some 480 million working on own account in industry and services. The 2007 ILO Global Employment Trends Report indicated that services have surpassed agriculture for the first time in human history: "In 2006 the service sector’s share of global employment overtook agriculture for the first time, increasing from 39.5 per cent to 40 per cent. Agriculture decreased from 39.7 per cent to 38.7 per cent. The industry sector accounted for 21.3 per cent of total employment."