Labour Rights and the Catholic Church

The International Labour Organisation, the Holy See and Catholic Social Teaching

Paul Beckett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000377842
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Sozialgeschichte

This book explores the extent of parallelism and cross-influence between Catholic Social Teaching and the work of the world's oldest human rights institution, the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Sometimes there is a mutual attraction between seeming opposites who in fact share a common goal. This book is about just such an attraction between a secular organisation born of the political desire for peace and justice, and a metaphysical institution much older founded to bring peace and justice on earth. It examines the principles evident in the teachings of the Catholic Church and in the secular philosophy of the ILO; together with the theological basis of the relevant provisions of Catholic Social Teaching and of the socio-political origins and basis of the ILO. The spectrum of labour rights covered in the book extends from the right to press for rights, i.e., collective bargaining, to rights themselves – conditions in work – and on to post-employment rights in the form of social security and pensions. The extent of the parallelism and cross-influence is reviewed from the issue of the Papal Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII Rerum Novarum (1891) and from the founding of the ILO in 1919.

This book is intended to appeal to lay, professional and academic alike, and will be of interest to researchers and academics working in the areas of international human rights, theology, comparative philosophy, history and social and political studies.

On 4 January 2021 it was granted an Imprimatur by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, Malcolm P. McMahon O.P., meaning that the Catholic Church is satisfied that the book is free of doctrinal or moral error.

1 Introduction

The bond

What lies behind the title to this book? “Labour Rights and the Catholic Church” seems unambiguous enough, simply posing the question of what workers’ rights are embedded in Catholic Social Teaching. But what of the International Labour Organisation paired with Catholic Social Teaching? What of the Holy See linked to the International Labour Organisation?

Sometimes there is a mutual attraction between seeming opposites, which turns out to be, in fact, an attraction between those who share a common goal, a common vision; those who walk on common pathways. It just does not appear that way to the casual observer who, imperfectly informed, attributes communality to mere coincidence. Perhaps that observer may stretch a point and say that what the two have in common is their identical but independently crafted solution to a puzzle: simple synchronicity. That observer would probably not go as far as to say that the attraction lies in each being aware of what the other has to offer and in the mutual benefit of the attraction itself: of symbiosis.

This book is about just such an attraction, between a secular organisation born of the political desire for peace and justice in the lawless chaos of 1919 and a metaphysical institution so very much older founded to bring peace and justice on earth. It shows how the principles of workers’ rights in Catholic Social Teaching played a seminal role as a moral force in the formation and development of the International Labour Organisation, and how in turn the principles formed and promoted by that organisation have influenced and enriched Catholic Social Teaching itself to become part of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

It is the story of a special bond as historic as the ILO itself; though for most of the last century it has been hiding in plain sight.

Secularism has dominated the historiography of the ILO from the beginning. The first comprehensive account of the formation of the ILO was that of J T Shotwell in his Origins of the International Labor Organization¹ published in 1934, and which remains a rich source of documentation contemporary to the negotiations of the Treaty of Versailles, which concerned the creation of the ILO. It makes no reference at all to any confessional, religious contribution. Four decades later, Antony Alcock produced his History of the International Labour Organisation² in 1971, which in its turn became the definitive text and which too is devoid of any confessional content. The tide has only very recently begun to turn. Daniel Maul in The International Labour Organization: 100 Years of Global Social Policy³ published in 2019 examines the initiatives of ILO’s first Director-General Albert Thomas who sought to establish relations with the Holy See. Yet Reiner Tosstorff in Ursprünge de ILO⁴ [Origins of the ILO] published in 2020 also abides by the purely secularist historiographic tradition, focussing solely on the contribution of socialist trade unions.

1 J T Shotwell, Origins of the International Labor Organization, Volumes I and II (Columbia University Press, New York, 1934).

2 Antony Alcock, History of the International Labour Organisation (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1971).

3 Daniel Maul, The International Labour Organization: 100 Years of Global Social Policy (Walter de Grutyer GmbH, Berlin, 2019).

4 Reiner Tosstorff, Ursprünge der ILO: Die Gründung der Internationalen Arbeitsorganisation und die Rolle der Gewerkshaften (VSA Verlag, Hamburg, 2020).

Writing in 2008 ILO historian Jasmien Van Daele wrote:

Within the broader network of transnational actors a lot has been said about labour and to a lesser extent liberal internationalism. On the side of Catholic social organizations, research on the ILO and the Christian working class is far less popular. One reason is the dominance of the socialist International Federation of Trade Unions in the ILO’s Workers’ Group in the first half of the twentieth century. In this light it would be interesting to know more about the (development of the) relationship between the ILO and the Catholic Church, after all both universal–international organizations.⁵

5 A comprehensive historiography of the ILO from a multidisciplinary perspective is found in Jasmien Van Daele, “The International Labour Organization (ILO) in Past and Present Research” in International Review of Social History Vol. 53, No. 3 (December 2008) 485, 510.

The challenge this poses is obvious; the solution perhaps less so.

Reinterpretation and hindsight

This is a secular age in which faith has faded and our understanding of the religious and social context of past measures – which were fuelled by hope and optimism for new beginnings – is distorted by what we know was to come. A note of caution has to be sounded when reviewing such material from a 21st-century perspective, with the benefit of over a century’s hindsight:

When one compares the social encyclicals written in the century after the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII Rerum Novarum (On Capital and Labour) (1891), it is possible to discern an evolution in the Church’s view on political-economic systems and its postulated social solutions. Such a comparison must be conducted very carefully, however, since the authors of these encyclicals […] never aspired to write a study that would encompass the whole problem, and this lack of a comprehensive solution iinevitably opens the field to deductive and inductive reasoning.⁶

6 Maciej Zięba, Papal Economics (ISI Books, Wilmington, Delaware, 2013) 55.

After all, we are prone to see patterns in everything, from stars in the heavens to grains of sand on a beach. For us it is comforting to perceive order and method where perhaps in reality the random and the chaotic dominate. It is tempting to regard the synchronous as more than merely serendipitous.

There is also the seductive nature of hindsight.

Historiography cannot avoid a degree of backwards projection. The past is a foreign country, its language dead. We read the past from our position in the present and we write history, consciously or unconsciously, with current interests and concerns in mind. Anachronism is not a defect; it is an unavoidable virtue which becomes problematic only when it hides behind a smokescreen of objectivity and detachment.⁷

7 Costas Douzinas, The End of Human Rights (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2000) 376.

That process of reinterpretation, founded on a predisposition to secularism in this undeniably secular first quarter of the 21st century, endures. Michel Godicheau, representing the International Association of Free Thought,⁸ addressed the International Labour Conference which marked the centenary of the ILO in June 2019 and saw no place for religion at the ILO:

8 An International Organisation Formed in 2011 to Promote an Atheist Viewpoint <www.internationalfreethought.org/manifeste-pour-la-liberte-de-conscience/> (accessed 16 October 2020).

The trade union movement at the international level is reflected in the ILO, which was established in 1919 in the wake of the First World War of 1914 and international pressure from workers and also the fear of the October Revolution becoming widespread as a decision stemming from the Treaty of Versailles. From the get-go, the form was tripartite: governments, representatives of employer organizations and representatives of trade union organizations of workers. Now this structural form stemmed from a principle which recognized the different interests of the three components. This entails managing a conflict of interests which are products of the class struggle. It is also to say that the very nature of the ILO, then the International Labour Office, was far removed from the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and its common good leading towards collaboration of class. [quoting Marc Blondel, former President of the National Federation of Free Thought] Therefore, the ILO does not seek to engage in institutional dialogue with religions in order to bring them into the mix of tripartite dialogue. Regardless of political, philosophical or religious references, the working class is made up on the basis of its own interests as part of a national context of its own organizations. These trade union organizations are the only ones who are allowed to represent their constituents.⁹ [Emphasis added]

9 Record of the Proceedings of the 108th Session of the ILC 2019 162. <www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---relconf/documents/meetingdocument/wcms_726221.pdf> (accessed 16 October 2020).

Yet amongst those trade unions there was from the beginning a substantial contribution to the development of the ILO made by the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions (themselves predominantly Catholic), diplomatic overtures were opened with the Holy See and since 1926 there has been without interruption a Jesuit in residence, acting as special advisor to the ILO Director-General on social and religious matters.¹⁰ These facts and Marc Blondel’s assertion cannot both be true.

10 See Chapter 5.

But is “truth” a constant? Time distinguishes what is true from what is false. The first Director-General of the ILO, Albert Thomas (1919 to 1932), was aware from its earliest years that the ILO attracted relationships which may have lacked substance or staying power. In his Report to the 12th Session of the International Labour Conference in 1929 he made this plain:

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