Latecomers to the ILO and the Authorship and Ownership of the International Labour Code

The article examines the extent to which latecomers to the International Labour Organization (ILO) that comprise more than one half of the organization could be said to have contributed to the establishment of the International Labour Code, about two-thirds of which had already been established by the time that they began to join the ILO as politically sovereign independent states. The article focuses on the recent work of the ILO Working Party on Policy Regarding the Revision of Standards (1994-2002). It evaluates both the significance of outcomes of the Working Party's achievements and the role of the latecomers in that enterprise. It shows that the latecomers have appropriated the ILO dynamic and utilized the ILO's working party and committee structures both to project matters of foremost concern to themselves onto the agenda of the ILO and to update the International Labour Code by evaluating, categorizing, and suspending some of the conventions and recommendations that they had deemed to be irrelevant. It concludes that after the conclusion of the work of the Working Party on Policy Regarding the Revision of Standards, latecomers to the ILO have become equal coauthors [End Page 706] and co-owners of the International Labour Code together with all the other member states parties of the ILO.