A long duree perspective on the ‘Future of Work’ debate in the ILO: A response and analysis in response to paper by Vicente Silva

Abstract

Although the terminology has changed over time, the ‘human-centredness’ of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) work was already enshrined in the objective of a ‘regime de travail réellement humain’ (humane working conditions) and the conviction that labour is not a commodity, as stated in the ILO’s founding constitution. These principles have informed the Declaration of Philadelphia in 1944 and the Decent Work Agenda adopted in 2000. They have been reconfirmed in the Centenary Declaration. The ILO has also always been oriented towards the future. And as a child of the industrial revolution and the 19th-century social reform movement, its mandate to improve labour conditions and promote labour rights envisioned this future as a democratic form of regulated welfare capitalism. However, more explicitly future-oriented debates have been primarily on technological change and its impact on the world of work. Silva rightly criticizes this narrow focus (Silva, 2021), since it reflects, until today, the dominant role of advanced industrial member states of the ILO. On the contrary, technological change can still be seen, together with climate change, as the most obvious driver of transformation in the world of work, in developed but also more and more in developing countries. The ideas and policy strategies to promote the ILO’s vision for the future of work and response to technological change have been adjusted over time. They have been influenced first by the power constellation in the ILO’s tripartite Governing Body and International Labour Conference and second by the innovative force and technical capacity of the International Labour Office, the ILO’s secretariat, which is not tripartite. While the ILO’s tripartite structure with employers’, workers’ and government representation