The World Parliament of Labour: The International Labour Organisation's First Hundred Years

This special issue of the King’s Law Journal includes some of the papers that were first presented at a symposium jointly organised by our respective academic institutions, KCL and UCL, in November 2019, to celebrate the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) first centenary. The symposium gave its attendees an opportunity to celebrate the contribution of the ILO to social justice and the quest for dignity in the world of work. It also became an opportunity to reflect on the future of the organisation, the challenges it faces, and the role of international labour standards more broadly. Crucially, it identified the principle of Freedom of Association as the axis around which the entire institutional and normative machinery of the ILO revolves. This was a suitable principle from which to analyse the functioning of an organisation that is sometimes referred to as ‘The World Parliament of Labour’, in a way that seeks to highlight both the rule-setting role of the organisation and its very unique democratic and representative credentials. Indeed, if the International Labour Conference (ILC) is often described as ‘the motor’ of the ILO, then Freedom of Association ought to be seen as the fuel and lubricant that make that engine work. Within the ILO, Freedom of Association is both a constitutional