International Trade-Union Movement Ilo

IRSH 50 (2005), pp. 399–433 DOI: 10.1017/S0020859005002166 # 2005 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis

The International Trade-Union Movement and the Founding of the International Labour OrganizationÃ

Reiner Tosstorff

Summary: Accounts of the founding of the International Labour Organization (ILO) usually emphasize the role of social-reformist intellectuals and politicians. Despite the indisputable role of these actors, however, the international labour movement was the actual initiator of this process. Over the course of World War I, the international labour movement proposed a comprehensive programme of protection for the working classes, which, conceived as compensation for its support of the war, was supposed to become an international agreement after the war. In 1919, politicians took up this programme 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 regarding the fulfilment of their demands. Instead, politicians offered them an institution that could be used, at best, to realize trade-union demands. Despite open disappointment and sharp critique, however, the revived International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) very quickly adapted itself to this mechanism. The IFTU now increasingly oriented its international activities around the lobby work of the ILO.

Markku Ruotsila recently described the establishment of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the spring of 1919 within the framework of the Paris Peace Conference as the result of an interaction between social-reformist intellectuals and politicians, in particular in the months after the end of World War I.1 Likewise, in this issue Jasmien Van Daele emphasizes the interlocking context in which two important Belgian leaders, a social-reformist intellectual and a socialist politician, acted. These are all undoubtedly important moments in the overall

à The present...