ABSTRACT
Figure 14.1 INGOs in the field of labour relations 167 Figure 14.2 The establishment of the World Health Organization (WHO) (1946) 173
Labour and competition between states
That governments began to conclude international conventions with regard to labour was not a consequence of the international labour movement, although the mere fact of workers organizing nationally and internationally contributed to the process. Rather than by workers’ organizations, international regulation of labour was brought about by socially-engaged employers, economists and lawyers, as well as by an NGO that was based on their ideas and actions. The first to argue for this was the entrepreneur Robert Owen, who became known as the ‘father of English Socialism’. He believed that modern industrial conditions caused hardship to many workers, which could be avoided by international coordination. In 1818 he even travelled to the diplomatic follow-up conference of Vienna in Aix-la-Chapelle (see Figure 2.3) in order to explain his views to the governmental representatives. He declared that setting the legal limits of the normal working day for the industrial classes of Europe internationally was a priority for the governments of Europe and invited the conference to appoint a commission to report on this subject (Johnston 1970, 5). But his understanding that modern industrial capitalism was creating an international problem, which could be solved by the emerging system of multilateral conferences, was ahead of its time. The governmental representatives did not understand him, taking him for an eccentric (Lyons 1963, 136). The British humanitarian entrepreneur Charles Hindley also had an international perspective, as he explained to the commission investigating factory conditions in the UK in 1833. He feared that a shortening of the working day might be stopped by increased international competition.
He admitted that shorter working hours would raise British prices, but also believed that technical superiority, the skill of the workers and the concentration of British industry would allow successful competition for many years. In case of increased and excessive competition, however, it would be necessary to deal with the problem through bilateral conventions. ‘I think it would be as proper a subject of treaty with foreign nations as the annihilation of the slave trade.’ In 1840 the French economist Jérome Adolphe Blanqui went one step further, by arguing in the French parliament that the regulation of the working day should be the subject of a multilateral treaty. He suggested that ‘all nations should unite in accepting the principle that there should be some agreed limitation of the working-day’ (Lyons 1963, 137).
