The Future of the International Labour Organization in the Global Economy by Francis Maupain Oxford: Hart Publishing Ltd., 2013, 300 pp + xix, ISBN: 978‐1‐84946‐502‐1, £50.00 hardback

• Date: 01 November 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12069
• Author: Michael Gold
• Published date: 01 November 2014

Book reviews

The Future of the International Labour Organization in the Global Economy

Francis Maupain

Oxford: Hart Publishing Ltd., 2013, 300 pp + xix, ISBN: 978-1-84946-502-1, £50.00

hardback

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is the great survivor among global

institutions. Founded in 1919, it weathered the Great Depression, the Second World

War, the Cold War, European decolonisation and the collapse of the Soviet Union,

and now confronts the apparently inexorable rise of rampant international

neoliberalism with its threats to global labour standards. It outlasted the League of

Nations and after 1945 witnessed the formation of the United Nations, the European

Union, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization

(WTO), among many other such bodies. Yet throughout all this turbulence, the ILO

has maintained its original reformist approach to improving labour standards as well

as its membership open to all states, based on a tripartite structure with employer,

worker and government representatives given equal weight in decision-making. It has

adopted 189 conventions and 202 recommendations, with 138 countries having rati-

fied all 8 fundamental conventions, covering freedom of association, forced labour,

discrimination and child labour.

Francis Maupain, a special advisor to the ILO’s director-general, divides his

book, The Future of the International Labour Organization in the Global Economy,

into four main parts, each addressing a key issue arising out of the organisation’s

formidable longevity: How has the ILO managed to maintain its identity over such

a long period? How has it managed to steer its own course among so many com-

peting multilateral bodies and agencies? What has been its influence? Lastly, what is

its future, and in particular, does its emphasis on persuasion undermine its capacity

to carry out its mandate into the 21st century (the core issue according to the

author)?

Maupain’s account of the ILO’s history is fascinating, as the organisation faced the

uncompromising hostility of the Comintern in the 1930s, but then post-War it nego-

tiated membership of the Soviet bloc countries. Indeed, their contribution to labour

standards was ‘far from negligible’ (p. 24) despite divergent views on the meaning of

freedom of association. However, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the

transition to globalising neoliberal economies confronted the ILO with the need to

deal with a wider variety of organisations, such as the IMF and the WTO, with their

own different constituencies and objectives. Given broad global agreement on the

‘universal rules of the game regarding workers’ rights’ established by the ILO through

its insistence on dialogue and persuasion (p. 18), the principal challenge now becomes

compliance. To what extent is it possible to make such rules effective unless

Industrial Relations Journal 45:6, 562–565

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd