Michigan Journal of International Law Volume 34 Issue 4 2013 Shared Responsibility and the International Labour Organization Yossi Dahan Law School, College of Law & Business, Ramat Gan Hanna Lerner Tel Aviv University Faina Milman-Sivan Haifa University Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjil Part of the International Law Commons, Labor and Employment Law Commons, and the Public Law and Legal Theory Commons Recommended Citation Yossi Dahan, Hanna Lerner & Faina Milman-Sivan, Shared Responsibility and the International Labour Organization, 34 MICH. J. INT'L L. 675 (2013). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjil/vol34/iss4/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Michigan Journal of International Law at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Journal of International Law by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 34040-mil_34-4 Sheet No. 5 Side A 10/10/2013 11:12:26 \\jciprod01\productn\M\MIL\34-4\MIL401.txt unknown Seq: 1 4-OCT-13 9:22 ARTICLES SHARED RESPONSIBILITY AND THE INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION Yossi Dahan, Hanna Lerner & Faina Milman-Sivan* INTRODUCTION ................................................. 676 R I. GLOBALIZATION, LABOR STANDARDS, AND BACKGROUND INJUSTICE ............................... 680 R A. The Gap ........................................... 682 R B. The Deterritorialization of Labor Law .............. 685 R C. The Problem of Background Injustice ............... 686 R D. A New Conception of Responsibility ................ 688 R II. THE ILO: A STATIST MODEL OF RESPONSIBILITY ....... 689 R A. The Statist Model: A Historical Perspective .......... 690 R B. The Statist Model and the ILO’s Organizational Structure ........................................... 693 R 1. Tripartism ...................................... 693 R 2. The Norm-Generating Process and ILS ......... 694 R C. The ILO’s Supervisory System: Sanctions and Incentives........................................... 696 R 1. The Regular Reporting System.................. 697 R 2. Supervision Procedures Based on Complaints and Representations ............................ 701 R 3. Additional Tools: Technical Assistance and Declaration Follow-Up.......................... 706 R III. SHARED RESPONSIBILITY AND LABOR ................... 709 R 34040-mil_34-4 Sheet No. 5 Side A 10/10/2013 11:12:26 A. Shared Responsibility: An International Approach and a Global Civil Society Approach ................ 710 R B. The Labor Connection Model and Principles of Shared Responsibility ............................... 714 R 1. The Connectedness Principle .................... 714 R 2. The Capacity Principle .......................... 716 R 3. The Beneficiary Principle ....................... 718 R 4. The Contribution Principle ...................... 718 R IV. APPLICATION IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE ILO ......... 719 R * Law School, College of Law & Business, Ramat Gan; Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University; Faculty of Law, Haifa University, respectively. The authors would like to thank Einat Albin, Mark Barenberg, Carol Gould, Judy Fudge, Anke Hassel, Alan Hyde, Brian Langille, Doreen Lustig, Guy Mundlak, Miriam Ronzoni, Prakash Sethi and Marley Weiss for their helpful comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Hila Shapira, Liat Leizer and Rafi Sabag for their research assistance and to Dana Meshulam for editorial assistance. The research for this Article was supported by a grant from the ISRAEL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (Grant No. 1340/09). 675 C M Y K 34040-mil_34-4 Sheet No. 5 Side B 10/10/2013 11:12:26 \\jciprod01\productn\M\MIL\34-4\MIL401.txt unknown Seq: 2 4-OCT-13 9:22 676 Michigan Journal of International Law [Vol. 34:675 A. Expanding the Scope of Actors Responsible for International Labor Standards ....................... 720 R 1. State Responsibility Beyond Territorial Borders . 722 R 2. Private Actors’ Responsibility ................... 723 R B. The ILO’s Supervisory System: Proposals for Reform ............................................. 728 R 1. The Reporting System .......................... 728 R 2. The Complaints System ......................... 734 R CONCLUSION ................................................... 740 R INTRODUCTION How should the international labor regime be reformed in order to guarantee all workers around the world minimum labor standards?1 This is the central question we address in this Article. It has been weighed and discussed by social scientists, legal scholars, and philosophers, who analyze it from various economic, political, and legal perspectives. Yet interest- ingly, the literature in this field has been, by and large, characterized by a sharp disciplinary divide: on the one hand, labor law scholars typically ad- dress the issue of international labor standards from a detailed practical perspective, defining the problems in terms of enforcement, efficacy, or other institutional and procedural obstacles to the effective implementa- tion of existing regulations.2 In their work, they generally neglect an analy- sis of the normative aspect of the institutions they discuss. On the other hand, the few philosophers and political theorists who focus on a philo- 1. By minimum labor standards, we refer to the worldwide consensus elaborated on in the Article, which can include the four core labor rights recognized by the International 34040-mil_34-4 Sheet No. 5 Side B 10/10/2013 11:12:26 Labour Organization (ILO) in addition to some level of minimum wage and health and safety protection. The ILO four core rights include (1) “freedom of association and the effec- tive recognition of the right to collective bargaining”; (2) “elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour”; (3) “effective abolishment of child labour”; (4) “elimination of dis- crimination in respect of employment and occupation.” Int’l Labor Conference, 86th Sess., Geneva, Switz., ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and Its Fol- low Up, June 18, 1998, 37 I.L.M. 1237, 1237-38 (1998) (annex revised June 15, 2010) [herein- after ILO Declaration], available at http://www.ilo.org/declaration/thedeclaration/ textdeclaration/lang—en/index.htm. 2. See, e.g., KIMBERLY ANN ELLIOTT & RICHARD B. FREEMAN, CAN LABOR STAN- DARDS IMPROVE UNDER GLOBALIZATION? 5-6 (2003); CHRISTINE KAUFMAN, GLOBALIZA- TION AND LABOUR RIGHTS: THE CONFLICT BETWEEN CORE LABOUR RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC LAW 5 (2007); Philip Alston, “Core Labour Standards” and the Transformation of the International Labour Rights Regime, 15 EUR. J. INT’L L. 457 (2004); Philip Alston, Facing up to the Complexities of the ILO’s Core Labour Standards Agenda, 16 EUR. J. INT’L L. 467, 472 (2005); Kevin Banks, Trade, Labor and International Governance: An Inquiry into the Potential Effectiveness of the New International Labor Law, 32 BERKELEY J. EMP. & LAB. L. 45, 49 (2011); Andreas Bieler, Ingemar Lindberg & Devan Pillay, The Future of the Global Working Class: An Introduction, in LABOUR AND THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBALIZATION: WHAT PROSPECTS FOR TRANSNATIONAL SOLIDARITY? 1, 1, 10 (Andreas Bieler et al. eds., 2008); Brian A. Langille, Core Labour Rights – The True Story (Reply to Alston), 16 EUR. J. INT’L L. 409, 420-21 (2005). C M Y K 34040-mil_34-4 Sheet No. 6 Side A 10/10/2013 11:12:26 \\jciprod01\productn\M\MIL\34-4\MIL401.txt unknown Seq: 3 4-OCT-13 9:22 Summer 2013] Shared Responsibility 677 sophical analysis of global labor rights often fail to take into account the practical legal details of international labor law.3 In this Article, we seek to bridge this interdisciplinary gap between the philosophical-normative and empirical-legalistic analytical frameworks of international labor standards. More specifically, this Article proposes a new understanding of responsibility to be adopted by the primary interna- tional organization that was established in 1919 for the purpose of promot- ing labor rights on the global level—the International Labour Organization (ILO). The Article also proposes a set of corresponding re- forms that will adapt the ILO to the unique challenges it is facing in the twenty-first century. In contrast to earlier legal studies of the ILO, which have focused on questions of its efficacy,4 institutional structure,5 or inter- nal politics,6 the reforms we suggest in this Article are based on a multidis- ciplinary approach that draws from a philosophical analysis of theories of global justice. Our chief claim is that a very central yet seemingly unnoticed obstacle to the realization of the ILO’s goals in the era of globalization stems from the Organization’s continued espousal of a statist conception of responsi- 3. See, e.g.,RICHARD W. MILLER, GLOBALIZING JUSTICE: THE ETHICS OF POVERTY AND POWER 60-62 (2010); Lea Ypi, On the Confusion Between Ideal and Non-Ideal in Recent Debates on Global Justice, 58 POL. STUD. 536, 536-37 (2010); Iris Marion Young, Responsibil- ity and Global Justice: A Social Connection Model,SOC. PHIL. & POL’Y, Jan. 2006, at 102, 119. 4. For a discussion of the efficacy of the ILO’s supervisory system, in particular, see, for example, LARS THOMANN,STEPS TO COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL LABOUR STAN- DARDS 62 (2011); Virginia A. Leary, Lessons from the Experience of the International Labour Organization, in THE UNITED NATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS: A CRITICAL APPRAISAL 580, 580-81 (Philip Alston ed.,