INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION Members of the League of Nations agree to establish a permanent organi zation to promote international adjust ment of labor conditions, to consist of an annual international labor conference and an international labor office.
The former is composed of four repre setatives of each State, two from the Government, and one each from the em ployers and the employed; each of them may vote individually. It will be a de liberative legislative body, its measures taking the form of draft conventions or recommendations for legislation, which, if passed by two-thirds vote, must be submitted to the lawmaking authority in every State participating. Each Gov ernment may either enact the terms into law; approve the principles, but modify them to local needs; leave the actual leg islation in case of a Federal State to local legislatures; or reject the conven tion altogether without further obliga tion.
The international labor office is es tablished at the seat of the League of Nations as part of its organization. It is to collect and distribute information on labor throughout the world and pre pare agenda for the conference. It will publish a periodical in French and Eng lish and possibly other languages. Each State agrees to make to it for presen tation to the conference an annual re port of measures taken to execute ac cepted conventions. The governing body, in its Executive, consists of twenty-four members, twelve representing the Gov ernments, six the employers, and six the employes, to serve for three years.
On complaint that any Government has failed to carry out a convention to which it is a party, the governing body may make inquiries directly to that Gov ernment, and in case the reply is un satisfactory may publish the complaint with comment. A complaint by one Gov ernment against another may be referred by the governing body to a commission of inquiry nominated by the Secretary General of the League. If the commis sion report fails to bring satisfactory ac tion the matter may be taken to a per manent court of international justice for final decision. The chief reliance for securing enforcement of the law will be publicity with a possibility of economic action in the background.
The first meeting of the conference will take place in October, 1919, at Wash ington, to discuss the eight-hour day or forty-eight-hour week; prevention of un employment; extension and application of the international conventions adopted at Berne in 1906, prohibiting night work for women, and the use of white phos phorus in the manufacture of matches; and employment of women and children at night or in unhealthy work, of women before and after childbirth, including ma ternity benefit, and of children as re gards minimum age.