Greetings from Foggy Bottom Washington, DC, the location of the first International Labor conference in 1919.

We have just heard a remarkable Keynote by Francis Maupain on simple steps the ILO could take to upgrade its normative and supervisory machinery.

Mr. Maupain approvingly takes note of the "unexpected" way that the ILO's 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work has helped to facilitate and justify international trade agreements. Earlier, Valerie Berset Bircher noted Francis's role as a legal architect of that Declaration 25 years ago.

As the years go by, I have come to appreciate more the signficance of the 1998 Declaration. 

The Declaration demonstrates how different fields of international law engage dialogically.

Recall the timeline:

In 1996, the World Trade Organization (or WTO) enacted its Singapore Declaration which stated that the ILO "is the competent body to set and deal with internationally recognized core labour standards."

Two years after this hand-off, the ILO attained success in approving a new Declaration that defined core labor standards and proclaimed them to be an obligation of ILO membership.

Then, just two years later, Jordan and the United States took note of the ILO Declaration in their new free trade agreement.

Over the next two decades, the ILO Declaration was referenced in at least 75 trade and investment agreements across the planet. Prof. Laurence Boisson de Chazournes mentioned the important question of what the ILO's role should be in implementation under those agreements. 

Seen from today, the ILO Declaration is living two lives --- both in the ILO and in the trading system. 

In his remarks this morning, Francis Maupain mentions my Essay for Anne and Brian's book* that discusses the fragile state of the multilateral trading system. In that essay, I suggested, sardonically, that major economies sometimes act as if they would prefer an Allied Trade Organization (ATO) over a nondiscriminatory world trade organization. I would oppose such a scheme because our fragile planet needs better multilateral connections between states, not more disconnection and disunity among states.

Francis offers several good ideas for a global integrated policy. In doing so, he takes note of the recent Foreign Affairs article by the Director-General of the WTO wherein she calls for governments to introduce "active labor market and social policies" to "ensure that the gains from trade and technology are broadly shared while their disruptive effects are softened" (July/August 2023 at 101).

I agree with Dr. Ngozi's suggestion. Indeed, back in 1986, I wrote an article for the California Management Review titled: "Worker Adjustment: The Missing Ingredient in Trade Policy." My article explained why trade policy should pay attention not just to the products being traded, but also to the workers making those products.

Sadly, 37 years later, worker adjustment is still largely missing in national and international trade policy.

The theme of Brian & Anne's book is Social Justice which is also topic of the 2023 Report of the ILO Director-General (DG).

The Report, titled "Advancing Social Justice", quite rightly begins by discussing the original 1919 ILO constitution and the 1944 addition with the Declaration of Philadelphia. I agree with everything the DG's Report says about 1919, but not what it says about 1944.

Consider Paragraph 3 of the Report of the DG which states:

"The Declaration of Philadelphia of 1944 powerfully reaffirmed the ILO’s mandate for social justice .... It made the attainment of social justice the central aim of all national and international policies, ...".

I wish this statement were true.

But I do not read the Declaration of Philadelphia as stating a legal principle that social justice is the central aim of international and national policies. 

Rather, I read the Declaration as a mandate for the ILO to work to position social justice at the center of economic policymaking. 

As Luc Cortebeeck noted earlier, social justice is sadly not yet taken seriously.

Three speakers this morning have mentioned the seminal Declaration of Philadelphia. Next May 2024 will mark its 80th anniversary. Any scholar planning to write about the Declaration would benefit from perusing the eight essays in the book, including the essay by Jordi Agusti-Panareda, that discuss the Declaration.

Francis ended his remarks by recalling the legacy of Albert Thomas.

I believe that Francis was acquainted with a few senior ILO officials who, in their early service, worked with Thomas.

Throughout his leadership of the early ILO, Thomas was thinking ahead on societal change and about the optimal role of the ILO in ongoing international economic cooperation.

In his last address to the ILO Conference, in 1932, Thomas put on the table the issue of whether the ILO should be associated "more directly with the actual work of financial and economic conferences" (ISP at 123).

Nowadays we remember Albert Thomas the visionary, but he was a realistic visionary who understood the difficulties that the ILO would face.

In 1926, after 7 years of working with the ILO social partners, Thomas foresaw "years of humdrum everyday work" ... "Conventions not ratified, hostility from employers, misunderstanding from the workers.... (ISP at 142).

Does any of that sound familiar?

In spite of those impediments, Thomas expressed hope that the ILO would succeed through "faith and energy supported by public opinion of all countries" in making the Labor Charter of the Treaty of Versailles "the reality which it ought to be" (ISP at 142).

Nearly a century later, Albert's vision inspires our work as we endeavor to transform every fundamental labor right into the reality which it ought to be.

*Social Justice and the World of Work. Possible Global Futures. Essays in honour of Francis Maupain (Brian Langille & Anne Trebilock eds, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2023.

Prof. Charnovitz thanks Kitrhona Cerri of the TASC Platform for organizing this book launch.