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Studying International Organizations

Milestones for a Transnational History of the International Labour Organization (1919-1939)

Prof. Sandrine Kott

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Point of departure

• The history of international organizations has long been studied as closely determined by the history of the relations between their Member States.

• As places where the governments of those States come face to face and where the most powerful among them assert their supremacy.

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Methodological point

IO as cultural and social spaces • To be able to regard International organizations as

specific places in which a “global community” has emerged.

• it is necessary to examine the ways in which these organizations develop into specific international players and seek to identify the nature of their influence.

• It is thus necessary to “open the black box”, study them from the inside, follow the everyday protagonists: officials and experts, apprehend them as cultural and social spaces.

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Methodological point 2IO in their relations to nations

• It is important to identify external “intermediaries” that act as potential environments for the organizations

• and, in turn, to study the ways in which the organization is itself “permeated by these environments”.

• This includes international non-governmental organizations but in a world where political and social life is largely organized by nation-States, these intermediaries are essentially national.

• Seen as “environments” and no longer merely as governments or States, nations are then reintroduced as key players in international organizations.

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IO places where the national dimension is « denationalized »

• By combining these two points of view, one can go beyond a vision of international organizations seen as places of conflict between governments and regard them as spaces of exchange between nations and of national-international circulation.

• From this standpoint, international organizations operate as places

where the international dimension is shaped and, correlatively,

as places where the national dimension is denationalized.

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The ILO as a case study (and test)

• The ILO is the oldest International Organization, founded in 1919

• Germany entered the ILO on 1919 (the League of nations in 1926) and the USA in 1934 (they never entered the LON)

• This is a tripartite organization with representatives of governments, employers and employees in the governing body of the Organization as well as in the annual international labor conference.

• In the interwar period the ILO mainly elaborated labor conventions based on the work of officials and experts trained in national contexts.

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1. Nations as shapers of the international sphere

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National origins of the international social reform movement

Governmental delegates and social experts like Fontaine for France, Cabrini for Italy, Delevingne for Great Britain and Vandervelde for Belgium,

• Politicians like Mayor Des Planches for Italy and Benes for Czechoslovakia;

• Representatives of the reformist workers’ movement like Leon Jouhaux for the French General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and Samual Gompers for the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

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Gompers and Jouhaux personifying international trade union movement.

• The European and North American trade unions, including the CGT led by Léon Jouhaux and the AFL led by Samuel Gompers, had managed to join together in an International Secretariat (1901) and subsequently in an International Federation of Trade Unions (1913) directed from Berlin by the German Carl Legien.

• In 1914, Samuel Gompers, called on trade unions to join together in order to develop their own post-war programme.

• At two meetings, in Leeds in 1916 and in Berne in 1917, Léon Jouhaux made decisive contributions.

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Social reformist international network

• Arthur Fontaine for France, Delevingne for Great Britain and Mahaim for Belgium formed part of this liberal reformist constellation that emerged within the various nations in the latter half of the nineteenth century and became international.

• The International Association for Labour Legislation (IALL) was founded in Paris in 1900 and run the Basel International Labour Office from 1901.

• The IALL was a forum for exchange and discussion among various national actors: governmental representatives, civil servants acting in their private capacity, trade unionists and industrialists.

• In its methods, aims and staff, the IALL has been an essential source of inspiration for the ILO.

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The international collection of national

information • The Berne Office was initially a sort of clearing house

gathering information on national social legislation.• Article 396 of the peace treaty assigns this task to the

ILO. • Two periodicals (International Labour Review and

Social Information) were published in the two official languages. They were distributed in other languages through the branch offices.

• The branch offices served as key intermediaries between national societies and the international organization.

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Branch offices as intermediaries between national societies and the international

organization

• The Paris, Washington (the USA entered the ILO in 1934) , London and Rome offices were established in 1919-1920.

• The Berlin office (Germany entered the ILO in 1919) was opened in 1921, followed by the Tokyo office in 1924.

• In addition to the national offices, six national correspondent offices were established in 1930

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Albert Thomas first Director of the ILO (1919-1932)summarizes the role of the branch offices

• The banch offices are• “informants for the management team, whom they

keep informed of events occurring or being prepared in the social policy field in the countries where they are appointed;

• informants for the office services for which they make it easier to gather and monitor the data required for their work and supply every kind of documentation sought from them in response to requests for information received by the office.

• Need I emphasize the crucial importance of this activity? It underlies every other activity”.

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The Berlin Branch office as a case study• It was by far the most important office in 1930

(mirroring the role of Germany for social reforms)• The office was located on the premises of the

ministry of labour, with which it maintained close relations.

• its two successive directors, Alexander Schlicke (1921-1925), and Willy Donau (1925-1933), had been chosen in close collaboration with the leaders of the main German trade union ADGB (social democratic obedience).

• The ADGB was strongly established in society but was also leading partners of the public authorities and in particular the ministry of labour.

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Trade unionists in the Berlin Branch office

• Alexander Schlicke and Rudolf Wissel, both active in the ILO, were ministers of labour;

• Willy Donau (head of the Berlin branch office) was a member of the labour authority of the city of Berlin and a Regierungsrat.

• Wilhelm Claussen a Christian trade unionist recruited in the Berlin Branch office in 1926 made a career in the ministry of labour of the Federal Republic as Secretary of State in the ministry of labour

• Thus through the trade unionists, the Office enjoyed a privileged relationship with German society, but also with social policy-makers.

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During the nazi period

• In May 1933, ADGB was dissolved and banned and its chiefs were arrested.

• The other Christian and liberal union movements were incorporated into the Labour Front (DAF) whose legitimacy of the DAF as a representative union was clearly disputed by workers’ representatives.

• The ILO reprensatative in Berlin Claussen tried to develop contacts the DAF (Robert Ley) as relations had ceased with the ministry of labour, clearly hostile to any collaboration with the ILO.

• In 1936 Claussen managed, to negotiate into obtaining information accreditation from the ministry of propaganda (Ministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda) and to “save” (until 1939) the ILO representation in Nazi Germany.

• The German ministry used the surveys made by the ILO on leisure policy as part of the nazi propaganda.

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What we learn from this example

• This highlights the dependency – both willing and unwilling - of the Office on the national actors in information collection and its helplessness in the face of totalitarian political dictatorships.

• The Nazis closely controlled the transmission of information and falsified results.

• They thus, as part of their political propaganda, used to their own advantage international surveys whose results they had helped to skew.

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2. Building of international knowledge and standards

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The procedure

• The information collected in the various countries served as a basis for the normative work. Treaty discussions were usually preceded by reports which set out one or more national laws or realities considered to serve as a particular source of inspiration.

• The drafting of conventions and recommendations was the outcome of lengthy preparatory work which went on by way of progressive and calculated compromises between national actors and the tripartite representatives of the Conference, the Governing Body and international officials.

• The procedure highlights the complex relationship established between the various levels and the various national and international actors; the work of the international officials is of prime importance in that regard.

• This work of permanent adjustment seems to make the officials the “guardians” of the Organization’s universality, over and above national interests.

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Officials as representatives of the universal?

• “Internationalism is a disembodied spirit unless it acquires some concrete symbol or activities as vehicle for its expression. In the present state of national separateness it is particularly important to build up an international administration apart from the national political units. This can not be done unless those who take part in the international administration are actually bound to it as its employees subject to its direction and responsible to it in the most intimate way. It is the international administrative unity which is the most important aspect of the organisation of the world community under the post war arrangement”.

• Gallone’s report on the activity of the ILO national correspondent offices, Washington branch office, 1930.

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International officials and internationalism

• The itinerary of most officials – particularly those who were neither British nor French – embodied a sort of internationalism or demonstrated at least an international spirit unmatched by the usual run of national elites at the time

• In 1920 introduction of the declaration of loyalty, in which the new official undertaked “not to seek or receive instructions from any government or other authority external to the International Labour Office”,

• This witnesses the permanence of the conflicting loyalty between national and international belonging as well as to a concern to counterbalance the spread of nationalism and respond to the pressure exerted by Governments.

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Officials between national and international

• Before becoming director of the Washington office, Leifur Magnusson had already been working at the ILO where he was the chief editor of the English edition of the review.

• Nevertheless, like many of the Office’s officials, he had come from his own country’s civil service. He had worked in the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States of America (as had most of his compatriots in the Office at that time).

• he had been a member of the advisory councils of the American Association for Labor Legislation and the American Association for Old Age Security.Both movements were involved in international social reformist networks.

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Officials and experts as go-between • These strong national ties were essential for

the ILO for at least two reasons. • First, as there was no institution dedicated to

the training of international civil servants, the Organization relied largely on national training and on technical skills acquired in the national arena

• Moreover, experts and officials alike were used in turn as intermediaries within their countries of origin.

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Beyond governement representatives

• Ministries of labour were a source of qualified personnel for the Office but they were not the only representatives of national societies.

• The commissions of experts allowed for diversification: the members of the insurance commissions included doctors and actuaries, but also publicists, academics and trade union fund managers.

• A loose international reform network was thus restored and its limits exceeded the small circle of State representatives

• During the 1920s and 1930s, recurrent conflicts with governmental representatives over the appointment of experts clearly reflected their desire to be the sole representatives of national expertise in the matter of social policy.

• Until the end of the 1930s, the Office, by insisting on competence, managed in practice to maintain some sovereignty in the choice of its experts, not without sometimes irresolvable tension with dictatorships

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Denationalizing social competencies: the German case

• Among the German experts, Dr Andreas Grieser played an important part.

• Chief of the social insurance division in the ministry of labour in Berlin he headed the German delegation in 1925 and, in 1927, at the International Labour Conference, the social insurance commission.

• He thus largely guided the drafting of Convention 24 on health insurance which is largely based on a “German model”.

• Willy Donau, who had been in charge of the Berlin office played a central role through his reports, in the circulation of German knowledge and expertise.

• Willy Donau and Andreas Grieser attested to effective procedures for the “internationalization” of officials and experts, who learned to transmit their national knowledge and to “enhance” it by incorporating and disseminating foreign know-how.

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Denationalizing social competencies A statement

• Germans, who were reputed to have received a sound training, played an important role in this circulation but they were not the only ones

• Certain national societies played a truly pivotal role. This was particularly true of Czechoslovakia, or rather of the Czech officials and experts from the former Habsburg empire who, by virtue of their knowledge of languages but also the transnational course of their lives, were important intermediaries between Eastern and Western Europe, and between Central Europe and the Balkans.

• It is thus clear that the ILO has largely facilitated the circulation of knowledge and has thus contributed first to its denationalization and then to its internationalization. This process was indisputably an essential but largely invisible contribution made by the Organization during the inter-war period.

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Conclusive statements• Rather than opposing nationalism and

Internationalism, on has to understand how they sustained one another.

• 1) The ILO must be regarded as a social space interrelated with national societies. These were used as resources. Through these national societies the international organizations’ scope for action is developed.

• 2) At the same time the ILO, by aiding in their circulation and dissemination, is a forum that is instrumental to the internationalization of knowledge and skills.

• 3) This process goes hand in hand with and encourages a sort of “denationalization” of national actors and knowledge – a phenomenon that is all too often confused with “universalization”.