INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION.
[Sidenote: Permanent organization to be established.]
Members of the League of Nations agree to establish a permanent
organization to promote international adjustment of labor conditions, to
consist of an annual international labor conference and an international
labor office.
The former is composed of four representatives of each State, two from
the Government, and one each from the employers and the employed, each
of them may vote individually. It will be a deliberative legislative
body, its measures taking the form of draft conventions or
recommendations for legislation, which, if passed by two-thirds vote,
must be submitted to the lawmaking authority in every State
participating. Each Government may either enact the terms into law;
approve the principles, but modify them to local needs; leave the actual
legislation in case of a Federal State to local legislatures; or reject
the convention altogether without further obligation.
[Sidenote: An international labor office.]
The international labor office is established at the seat of the League
of Nations as part of its organization. It is to collect and distribute
information on labor throughout the world and prepare agenda for the
conference. It will publish a periodical in French and English, and
possibly other languages. Each State agrees to make to it for
presentation to the conference an annual report of measures taken to
execute accepted conventions. The governing body, in its Executive,
consists of twenty-four members, twelve representing the Governments,
six the employers, and six the employes to serve for three years.
[Sidenote: Court of international justice.]
On complaint that any Government has failed to carry out a convention to
which it is a party, the governing body may make inquiries directly to
that Government, and in case the reply is unsatisfactory, may publish
the complaint with comment. A complaint by one Government against
another may be referred by the governing body to a commission of inquiry
nominated by the Secretary General of the League. If the commission
report fails to bring satisfactory action the matter may be taken to a
permanent court of international justice for final decision. The chief
reliance for securing enforcement of the law will be publicity with a
possibility of economic action in the background.
[Sidenote: Labor conferences.]
The first meeting of the conference will take place in October, 1919, at
Washington, to discuss the eight-hour day or forty-eight-hour week;
prevention of unemployment; extension and application of the
international conventions adopted at Berne in 1906, prohibiting night
work for women, and the use of white phosphorus in the manufacture of
matches; and employment of women and children at night or in unhealthy
work, of women before and after childbirth, including maternity benefit,
and of children as regards minimum age.
LABOR CLAUSES.
[Sidenote: Of supreme national importance.]
Nine principles of labor conditions were recognized on the ground that
"the well-being, physical and moral, of the industrial wage earners is
of supreme International importance." With exceptions necessitated by
differences of climate, habits and economic development. They include:
the guiding principle that labor should not be regarded merely as a
commodity or article of commerce; the right of association of employers
and employes; a wage adequate to maintain a reasonable standard of life;
the eight-hour day or forty-eight-hour week; a weekly rest of at least
twenty-four hours; which should include Sunday wherever practicable;
abolition of child labor and assurance of the continuation of the
education and proper physical development of children; equal pay for
equal work as between men and women; equitable treatment of all workers
lawfully resident therein, including foreigners; and a system of
inspection in which women should take part.