Core Labour Standards and Globalisation
The ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its follow-up (henceforth the Declaration) was adopted by the ILO Conference in 1998.
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Gestation of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Declaration
1.1
ILO and Fair Labour Standards
The ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its follow-up (henceforth the Declaration) was adopted by the ILO Conference in 1998. It led to an end of the argument over the universality of international labour and fair labour standards. The Declaration fixed the core labour standards in the fields of freedom of association and collective bargaining, non-discrimination, abolition of forced labour, and abolition of child labour. These are based on universal human rights which in principle cannot be denied by anyone. The Declaration affects many international issues including the labour clause of the bilateral and multilateral free trade agreement. The original paper was presented at the IW/FAFXM/US Regional Seminar on the Application of the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and Its Follow-up (Bangkok, 25–27 February 2002).
© The Author(s) 2017 N. Kuriyama, Japanese Human Resource Management, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43053-9_12
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Japanese Human Resource Management
This chapter examine of the gestation (see Table 12.1) and effects of the Declaration. The ILO was set up for the establishment of eternal peace and social justice in 1919. This universal value has been a guiding principle for setting the ILO standards. In addition, international competition among the original member countries made it necessary to secure and maintain fair and humane working conditions as an international aspect of labour standards (Charnovitz 1994). Article 414 of the Versailles Treaty (which became a part of the ILO constitution) says that ‘the Commission of Enquiry has fully considered the complaint; it shall prepare a report embodying its findings on all questions of fact . . . It shall also indicate in this report the measures, if any, of an economic character against a defaulting Government.’ This clause indicated the possibility of economic sanction against unfair labour standards. However, this measure was not enforced by the ILO. Eventually, Art. 414 was deleted during the revision of the ILO constitution in 1946. In this context, the ILO constituency often suggested during the pre-war period that Japan’s rapid development of export trade was due to cost reductions enabled by unsatisfactory labour conditions in its exporting industries. This claim of ‘social dumping’ was denied by the ILO research mission in 1934 headed by the Assistant Director at the time, Fernand Maurette. Maurette’s report illustrated the virtue of dialogue and voluntary involvement in the ILO mechanism to Japan’s social partners (Mourette, 1934).
1.2
ILO Standards After the World War II
Upon the adoption of the Declaration of Philadelphia in 1944, technical cooperation activities were included as an important means of action for the ILO; it can thus promote the ratification of and compliance with conventions by many new-member developing countries. The field of technical cooperation has focused on
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