SECTION XIII.

INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION.

[Sidenote:  Permanent organization to be established.]

Members of the League of Nations agree to establish a permanent organization to promote international adjustment of labor conditions, to consist of an annual international labor conference and an international labor office.

The former is composed of four representatives of each State, two from the Government, and one each from the employers and the employed, each of them may vote individually.  It will be a deliberative 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 Government may either enact the terms into law; approve the principles, but modify them to local needs; leave the actual legislation in case of a Federal State to local legislatures; or reject the convention altogether without further obligation.

[Sidenote:  An international labor office.]

The international labor office is established 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 prepare agenda for the conference.  It will publish a periodical in French and English, and possibly other languages.  Each State agrees to make to it for presentation to the conference an annual report of measures taken to execute accepted conventions.  The governing body, in its Executive, consists of twenty-four members, twelve representing the Governments, six the employers, and six the employes to serve for three years.

[Sidenote:  Court of international justice.]

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 Government, and in case the reply is unsatisfactory, may publish the complaint with comment.  A complaint by one Government against another may be referred by the governing body to a commission of inquiry nominated by the Secretary General of the League.  If the commission report fails to bring satisfactory action the matter may be taken to a permanent 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.

[Sidenote:  Labor conferences.]

The first meeting of the conference will take place in October, 1919, at Washington, to discuss the eight-hour day or forty-eight-hour week; prevention of unemployment; extension and application of the international conventions adopted at Berne in 1906, prohibiting night work for women, and the use of white phosphorus in the manufacture of matches; and employment of women and children at night or in unhealthy work, of women before and after childbirth, including maternity benefit, and of children as regards minimum age.