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International Labor Standards in the Building of Two Postwar Orders, 1919-1949
| This paper will explore the work, achievements, and limitations of the voice of labor in one international organization during two postwar eras. It will reflect upon the International Labor Organization’s role in expressing ideas of liberal reform throughout the North Atlantic world within the creation of a 20th century liberal labor internationalism. This work, part of a dissertation in the research stage, will reflect on peace-making efforts in the aftermath of WW I, including the creation of the ILO, yet focus primarily on the movement towards a more extensive and ultimately more permanent international cooperative network following WW II. Like the subject itself, the dawning recognition that labor could not achieve justice and equity by struggling only within national boundaries, this study will be transnational.
Combining my recent three month efforts in the archives of Washington DC with work scheduled for this spring (2007) in Europe I aim to address how workers, along with those concerned with their rights and welfare, transcended both craft particularism and nationalism in order to construct an international labor dialogue. What observations convinced labor that organizational and reform efforts needed to transcend the national level? What is the relationship between ILO activists and those of other international labor, or labor-oriented organizations, such as the IFTU, the International Transportworkers Union, various so-called international unions based in the US, the International Association for Labor Legislation, and the Women’s Trade Union Leagues? What was unique about this liberal labor internationalism, as distinct from the socialist-oriented versions, that preceded and paralleled it? As the West increasingly polarized along ideological lines following the successes of Bolshevism in Russia, how was liberal labor internationalism disentangled from its farther-left cousin? Finally, how important was it for ILO advocates to have a base in labor parties, or in the US, a coalition with the Democratic Party, and what did this mean for international relations in this war-to-war period?
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