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Labor and hegemony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Robert W. Cox
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The United States' notice of withdrawal from the ILO is to be understood in terms of hegemonic power relations. “Tripartism” is an ideology based upon a dominant historical tendency, namely the emergence of a corporative form of state in both developed and underdeveloped countries. The AFL-CIO has participated in the construction of the corporative state in the US and has supported its hegemonic role in the world in concert with American business interests and the CIA. Neither the ILO nor international trade union organizations (especially the ICFTU) has enjoyed a stable relationship with the center of hegemonic power in the labor field, since the AFL-CIO has conducted a unilateral foreign policy. The functionalist strategy of executive leadership asserting the autonomy of an international organization through task expansion in technical fields has been almost totally irrelevant to the issue. Nor has the ILO found an alternative counter-hegemonic base of support, e.g., in the Third World. The existing hegemony has reasserted itself through the ILO program and ideology even as the US has withdrawn material support. Hegemony, which no longer operates through majority votes in international organizations, works instead through bureaucratic controls. This structure of power has prevented the ILO from confronting effectively the real social issues of employment-creation, land reform, marginality, and poverty in general. Initiatives that have been taken to deal with such issues have all ultimately been diverted into programs consistent with the hegemonic ideology and power relations.

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International Organization , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , Summer 1977 , pp. 385 - 424
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Copyright © The IO Foundation 1977

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References

1 Collingwood, R. G., The Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), p. 214Google Scholar. Each person who undertakes to penetrate events so as to make them reveal their deeper structures is likely to have some body of direct experience that facilitates access to the broader picture. My point of entry is through the ILO, with which I was associated for twenty-five years, between 1948 and 1972, during the latter period as director of the International Institute for Labour Studies with the rank of assistant director-general. Though it is thus informed by personal experience, the present account rests upon evidence of a kind accessible to historians. It should also be emphasized that the analytical perspective subsequently acquired as an outsider observer since 1972 has enabled me to place within a broader context events in which I had earlier participated directly. It hardly need be added that my analysis in no way reflects an official ILO perspective.

2 A complete critical edition of Giamsci's prison notebooks has been published under the auspices of the Istituto Gramsci. Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere (Torino: Guilio Einaudi, 1975)Google Scholar.

3 This is evident from the testimony of those involved in the peace negotiations. See for example Butler, Harold, Confident Morning (London: Faber and Faber, 1950) p. 175Google Scholar.

4 The fullest account of this episode is in Moynihan, Daniel P., “The United States and the International Labour Organization” (Ph.D. dissertation, Fletcher School of Diplomacy, 1960)Google Scholar.

5 For example, as stated in The AFL-CIO Platform Proposals presented to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions 1976.

6 The letter and accompanying supporting news releases from the Chamber of Commerce of the United States and the AFL-CIO, both dated November 6, 1976, were circulated by the Department of Labor. For an analysis of factors behind the decision to give notice of withdrawal, see Windmuller, John P., “U.S. Participation in the ILO: The Political Dimension, ” in Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Industrial Relations Research Association (1974) pp. 100–08Google Scholar.

7 Philippe C. Schmitter has performed a public service in attempting to define corporatism in such a way as to give it precise meaning in social science discourse. He sees corporatism as a structure of interest representation (thereby separating it analytically from a form of political domination, e.g., authoritarianism). For Schmitter corporatism is one of four ideal types of interest representation, the others being pluralism, monism, and syndicalism. His formal definition is: “a system of interest representation in which the constituent units are organized into a limited number of singular, compulsory, noncompetitive, hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories, recognized or licensed (if not created) by the state and granted a deliberate representational monopoly within their respective categories in exchange for observing certain controls on their selection of leaders and articulation of demands and supports.” Schmitter, Phillippe C., “Still the Century of Corporatism?” in Pike, Frederick B. and Stritch, Thomas, editors, The New Corporatism: Social-Political Structures in the Iberian World (University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), pp. 93–94Google Scholar. Schmitter's usage is thus confined to the state level. My own differs slightly from his (but, I think, includes his): corporatism, as I use the term, is in essence a form of production relations, one based on an ideology of non-antagonistic class relations and on bureaucratized structures of representation and control. As such, it may exist at the enterprise level as well as at the state level (enterprise corporatism is a distinctive mode of social relations of production). At the state level, I refer to the general category of the corporative state, which takes two main forms historically corresponding to what Schmitter has called societal and state corporatism. Tripartism is historically linked to the societal form, emerging in countries of advanced capitalism (out of what Schmitter describes as “the slow, almost imperceptible decay of advanced pluralism, ” ibid., p. 106); state corporatism characteristically has been associated with dependent capitalism. Note that the corporatist concept at the enterprise level applies to Soviet production relations, although the structure of central planning at the state level must be differentiated from tripartism. I have attempted to develop the meaning of the concepts as used here in Cox, R. W., “Pour une étude prospective des relations de production, ” Sociologie du Travail (03 1977)Google Scholar. There is a growing literature on corporatism and the modern state. Several salient works merit mention as influencing the notion presented here. Shonfield, Andrew, Modern Capitalism (London: Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar, discerned common structural characteristics in the countries of advanced capitalism during the post-World War II period. The antecedents of the contemporary corporative state, as they emerged in France, Germany, and Italy following World War I, are traced in a comparative history by Maier, Charles S., Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade After World War I (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar. In the United States, the growth of the corporative state can be traced in a succession of waves: World War I, the first phase of the New Deal, World War II, and the Johnson and Nixon administrations. The New Deal phase is observable through Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr.'s history, The Age of Roosevelt, esp. Vol. II, The Coming of the New Deal (London: Heinemann, 1960), pp. 83–169Google Scholar.

8 See Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Vol. II, pp. 371–406.

9 The picture of union labor as a middle class group–of middle income, not notable disposed towards economic and social change, more supportive of the Vietnam war and tough action against crime than of social welfare and the war on poverty–is drawn in an establishment view of American labor. Bok, Derek C. and Dunlop, John T., Labor and the American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), esp. pp. 43, 47, 121, 134Google Scholar.

10 A growing number of studies deal with the duality of labor markets in the United States, most arising from concern with the characteristics of poverty. Eaily instances of this fairly recent discovery of the existence of two largely separate kinds of labor market are Doeringer, P. and Piore, M., Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1971)Google Scholar and Gordon, David M., “Class, Productivity and the Ghetto, ” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1971Google Scholar. An empirical study applying statistical techniques to effect a binary split according to primary and secondary labor market characteristics within a sample of 1023 individuals (data collected by the Institute for Social Research of The University of Michigan) was carried out by Wachtel, Howard M. and Betsey, Charles, “Low Wage Workers and the Dual Labor Market: An Empirical Investigation, ” The Review of Black Political Economy, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring 1975): 288–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A summary of the state of dual labor market theory among radical economists in the US is by Reich, Michael, Gordon, David M., and Edwards, Richard C., “A Theory of Labor Market Segmentation, ” Papers and Proceedings of the 85th Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, Toronto, 12 28–30, 1972, Vol. 63, No. 2 (May 1973): 359–65Google Scholar. Peter Doeringer has investigated the extent to which duality in labor markets exists in Great Britain, Japan, and Sweden as well as in the United States, and finds a similar pattern of stratification, except for the case of Sweden where the vast majority of workers are included in the primary labor market. Doeringer, , “Low Pay, Labor Market Dualism, and Industrial Relations Systems, ” (unpublished) Discussion Paper No. 271, Harvard Institute of Economic Research, Harvard University, 01 1973Google Scholar. Insofar as the sample used by Wachtel and Betsey may be representative of the labor force as a whole (it was collected for a survey of consumer finances and consists of individual heads of households of dwelling units), the primary labor market would encompass substantially less than half, in effect about 35 percent of the labor force.

11 While unions have become ever more centralized and union leaders more ready to be integrated into the tripartite management of the economy, there have, since the 1960s, been increasing signs of restiveness among the secondary labor market workers in America. Young, Black, and women workers in particular have acted against the policies of union leaders, mainly with the aim of gaining more direct control over the work process (while union leaders have cooperated with management in supporting productivity drives and concentrated on the wage claims more popular with older and more skilled primary labor market workers). The protest movements have frequently taken place outside of union structures in wildcat strikes, sabotage, and absenteeism, but seem not as yet to have acquired a focused and coherent ideology. In a thoughtful analysis, Aronowitz, Stanley, “Arthritic Unionism: Corporate Labor in America, ” Social Policy (05–06 1972): 40–52Google Scholar, concludes that out of the likely continuing confrontation between established unions and the workers' revolt “one can expect that the trade unions will fortify their role as the representatives of the most privileged, the most socially integrated, and the oldest sections of the working class.” (p. 52).

12 From U.S. News and World Report, February 21, 1972, p. 28. Meany's figure of $7, 500 is strikingly close to the mean annual earnings of primary labor market workers found by Wachtel and Betsey (fn. 9), which was $7, 634. The mean annual earnings of secondary labor market workers was $5, 478. (p. 296).

13 Goulden, Joseph C., Meany (New York: Atheneum, 1972)Google Scholar.

14 Raskin, A.H., “After Dunlop, ” The New York Times, 02 3, 1976, p. 31Google Scholar.

15 Burnham, David, The New York Times, 11 9, 1975Google Scholar.

16 Raskin, in the article of February 3, 1976, referred to in fn. 14.

17 See especially Windmuller, John P., American Labor and the International Labor Movement, 1940 to 1953, Cornell International Industrial and Labor Relations Reports, No. 2 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Institute of International Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, 1954)Google Scholar. Lovestone's break with Communism is covered in Draper, Theodore, American Communism and Soviet Russia (New York: Viking Press, 1960)Google Scholar. Radosh, Ronald, American Labor and United States Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1969)Google Scholar is a “revisionist” interpretation.

18 Meany's biographer Goulden (fn. 13), for example, gives an account of the CIA connection, pp. 127–31. Various accounts of AFL and AFL-CIO foreign operations have been published that deal with the CIA connection; see, for example, Lens, Sidney, “American Labor Abroad: Lovestone Diplomacy, ” The Nation, (06 5, 1965): 10–28Google Scholar; and Godson, Roy, “Nongovernmental Organizations in World Politics: The American Federation of Labor in France, 1945–1952” World Affairs, Vol. 136, No. 3 (Winter 1973–1974): 208–31Google Scholar. The involvement of the CIA in American labor's actions abroad, especially through Lovestone and Brown, was a matter of accepted common knowledge among European trade unionists active in international labor affairs, long before any public proofs were available. The matter was put into public print by Braden, Thomas W., a former CIA official, in an article in The Saturday Evening Post (05 20, 1967)Google Scholar. Braden explained how he had passed CIA money to Brown, some of which was used to pay “strong-arm squads in Mediterranean ports, so that American supplies could be unloaded against the opposition of Communist dock workers.” Braden reported he had also given CIA money to Walter Reuther. (A revelation seemingly provoked by the fact that Victor Reuther had been criticizing Lovestone and Brown for taking CIA funds.) Braden estimated that Lovestone had been paying the break-away unions in France and Italy nearly two million dollars annually. Goulden cites evidence from Richard L.G. Deverall, AFL proconsul in the Far East, who told him: “I don't think Meany knew where Lovestone was getting the money. Of course, it's all pretty much common knowledge now, and I don't see anything wrong with it.” (Goulden, p. 130). Further confirmation came in a document that in 1971 fell into the hands of radical students occupying the building in Cambridge, Mass., that houses the Harvard University Center for International Affairs. This was a confidential record of a meeting held at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, on January 8, 1968; the document was subsequently published in Victor Marchetti and Marks, John D., The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1974)Google Scholar. One of the participants in the meeting, Meyer Bernstein, Director of International Affairs of the United Steelworkers of America, was reported as commenting: “before May 1967 it was common knowledge that there had been some CIA support for labor programs, but first Rampartsand then Tom Braden spelled out this support in public. Those in international labor affairs were dismayed, and certain newspapermen confounded their difficulties by confusing AID with the CIA, and claiming that the AFL-CIO's Free Labor Development program was tainted. Since these disclosures, the turn of events has been unexpected. First, there hasn't been any real trouble with international labor programs. Indeed, there has been an increase in demand for US labor programs and the strain on our capacity has been embarrassing. Formerly, these foreign labor unions knew we were short of funds, but now they all assume we have secret CIA money, and they ask for more help.” And Bernstein concluded: “We've come to accept CIA, like sin.” (Quoted in Marchetti and Marks, pp. 51–52, and 395.)

19 Agee, Philip, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1975)Google Scholar includes many accounts of CIA use of trade union cover for work in Latin America, particularly in attempting to organize non-Communist unions. Agee reports from his briefings in the CIA that Meany as well as Lovestone and Brown were “effective and witting collaborators” of the agency (p. 75).

20 Goulden, pp. 136–37. The question of control by the AFL-CIO over the appointment of labor attache's was raised by Senator J.W. Fulbright in hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1969, to which Meany responded: “Control, no. We make suggestions. I would not say we control it at all. But we have recommended a number of people and they have been accepted and are serving abroad, yes.” American Institute for Free Labor Development, Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 91st Congress, 1st session, with George Meany, President AFL-CIO, August 1, 1969. US Government Printing Office: Washington, 1969, (hereinafter referred to as AIFLD Hearing)p. 58Google Scholar.

21 Much of the questioning of Meany by Senator Fulbright in the aforementioned hearing (fn. 20) concerned the substitution of AID funds for previous CIA financing. Meany continued to deny that the AFL-CIO had received funds from the CIA. (AIFLD Hearing, pp. 23–24). Fullbright cited press reports in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by its chief Washington correspondent, Richard Dudman, published in the editions of April 13 and April 14, 1969, which reported how AID had “picked up the tab” for some “CIA orphans.” “The new conduits, taking the place of the mysterious foundations that transmitted the CIA money, are a group of regional labor institutes financed mainly by AID and operated by the AFL-CIO.” (Ibid., p. 24.) A similar report was published in The Washington Post, April 28, 1969, by Bernard Nossiter (ibid., pp. 74–76). Senator Fulbright commented: “I know of no precedent in which a private organization similar to yours is likewise given money to go out and to influence governments and to lobby in foreign parliaments and to try to influence foreign policy.” (Ibid., p. 46.) Meany steadfastly maintained “We don't do any of those things and you cannot prove that we do.” (p. 47.)

22 Goulden, p. 330.

23 AIFLD Hearing, p. 6. Among the contributors to the AIFLD were International Telephone and Telegraph, Kennecott Copper Corp., The Anaconda Co., The United Fruit Co., the First National City Bank, and the Chase Manhattan Bank.

24 Goulden, pp. 223–25. Romualdi, in a memoir that is consistently Manichean in its anti-Communist vision of the world, affected surprise at the repression of labor following Castillo Armas' victory, and blames it on “reactionary forces” that “eventually gained the upper hand” despite the good intentions of Castillo Armas himself. Romualdi, Seraphino, Presidents and Peons (New York: Funk and Wagnall, 1967), pp. 244–47Google Scholar.

25 William Doherty, then director of the Social Projects Department of the AIFLD and subsequently executive director of the AIFLD, in a comment broadcast over the Mutual Broadcasting System on July 12, 1964, referred to AIFLD trainees from Brazil who, on their return, had become involved in the overthrow of the Goulart government: “Some of them were so active that they became intimately involved in some of the clandestine operations of the revolution before it took place on April 1. What happened in Brazil on April 1 did not just happen—it was planned—and planned months in advance. Many of the trade union leaders—some of whom were actually trained in our institute—were involved in the revolution, and in the overthrow of the Goulart regime.” (AIFLD Hearing, p. 29.)

26 Goulden, pp. 333–34. The confidential document published in Marchetti and Marks (fn. 18) included the statement that “British Guiana's labor unions were supported through CIA conduits.” The New York Times published a letter from Dr. Cheddi Jagan in July 1963 charging that the AIFLD was involved in the attempt to overthrow his government, a charge borne out by information that later became available. Seraphino Romualdi (then executive director of the AIFLD), who was specifically mentioned by Jagan as the leading instigator, gives his account of the events (including his putting six graduates of AIFLD at the service of the anti-Jagan movement) as an episode in his worldwide struggle with Communism. (Romualdi, pp. 345–52).

27 A detailed study of US trade union action in support of US business interests in Jamaica is to be found in Harrod, Jeffrey, Trade Union Foreign Policy: The Case of British and American Unions in Jamaica (Garden City, M.Y.: Doubleday, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 In response to a question from Senator Fulbright referring explicitly, but not exclusively to the Vietnam War, Meany said: “Our activities in this respect, Mr. Chairman, are part of the activities of our Government. … When we help the Vietnamese trade union, which is certainly on our side, we feel we are furthering the policy of our own Government. … We think we are doing what good citizens should do to help their country in these affairs.” (AIFLD Hearing, p. 37.)

29 Goulden, p. 133.

29 Windmuller, John P. has written extensively about AFL and AFL-CIO relations with the ICFTU. See especially “Leadership and Administration in the ICFTU: A New Phase of Development, ” British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 1, No. 2 (06 1963): 147–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Foreign Policy Conflict in American Labor, ” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 82, No. 2 (06 1967): 205–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Internationalism in Eclipse: The ICFTU after Two Decades, ” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 23, No. 4: (07 1970) 510–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 The conversation took place at Caracas, Venezuela, during an ILO regional conference that was a turning point for Jenks' campaign. The timing of the conference (which had been delayed from its original timetable) and the fact that Blanchard was absent as he had no official reason to be there, gave Jenks an advantage with Latin American delegates who might on balance have been thought likely to be more favorable to Blanchard's candidacy. Furthermore, Jenks' personal relations with top Venezuelan leaders helped him in this setting. His success in acquiring United States support at this time consolidated his candidacy.

32 The career of George P. Delaney illustrates an aspect of “tripartism.” At the time of these events he was Special Assistant to the Secretary in the Department of State. Delaney's role in the State Department was the subject of inquiries by Senator Fulbright (AIFLD Hearing, pp. 58–59), particularly with regard to appointment of labor attaches. Senator Fulbright asked Meany whether Delaney had not been formerly an official of the AFL-CIO. Meany denied this, adding: “He was a representative, a workers' representative, on the ILO representing the U.S. Government. He worked in the Labor Department. He has been in Government service to my knowledge for over 20 years.” This may have been a Freudian slip. Meany could hardly have forgotten that Delaney had been AFL International Representative, and a worker's member of the ILO Governing Body representing US labor throughout the Cold War years. He later joined the Labor Department as Assistant to Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell, in the Eisenhower administration, before joining the Department of State.

33 Reported by Hildebrand, George H. in Departments of State, Justice and Commerce, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1971. Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Ninety-First Congress, Second Session. Part 5. Additional Testimony on the International Labor Organization (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1970, hereinafter referred to as ILO Hearings), p. 71Google Scholar. The reference to “administrative actions taken before I assumed this office” was a rather lame attempt to place the responsibility for the decision on Morse. In the hearings, Meany stated that the decision “could not have been made by Dave Morse because he would not have gone out of his office without announcing a decision he had made. It had to be made by Mr. Jenks.” (Ibid., p. 77).

34 ILO Hearings, p. 69.

35 Ibid., p. 76.

36 People with whom Jenks had working relationships can be divided into three groups: ILO officials, persons connected in a representative way with the ILO, and international law specialists. A few, but very few, bridged these three groups, and these few should have been in the best position to understand his thought processes. No attempt is made here to analyze Jenks' extensive legal writings, a task that is best left to some diligent researcher in international law. It is not irrelevant to the matter in hand, however, to point to a style characteristic of his written work. The reader is impressed in the first instance by the massive accumulation of quotations and references and the breadth of topics covered. Admiration for the industry and power of memory that has gone into the construction of the work yields place, on reflection, to perplexity over the eclecticism with which now one, now another basis of argument is marshalled in support of the author's contentions—now the opinions of revered authorities, now evidence of precedent or practice in a variety of legal systems, now appeals to moral sentiment, depending upon which material seems most convenient to the purpose. It further becomes increasingly evident that the reader's labor of assimilating all these elements is not disclosing some objective reality of law revealed through history, but is disclosing rather an intensity of volition revealed in the author—his lists of “we must” do this and that, his appeals for “bold and vigorous action” assorted with vague exhortations to meet “a challenge to evolve procedures of consensus and techniques of responsibility within a context of dynamic action” (A New World of Law? London: Longmans, 1969, p. 231)Google Scholar. Jenks' invoking of “the intellectual rigour and vigour” of the law, accompanied by condescending if not downright disparaging references to other disciplines, cannot obliterate the critical reader's sense of the essentially subjective nature of his work-it proceeds from an inner vision of a future world, couched in phrases drawn from the past like the “parliament of man” and the “common law of mankind.” The subjectivity of the work is the more troubling in that the author seems to be utterly devoid of any awareness of the extent to which his own imagination is the product of his personal history. This is a rather flagrant case of what Vico called “the conceit of scholars, ” that takes the form of asserting one's own historically conditioned thoughts as being of universal validity. No detailed exegesis of Jenks' writings would be useful in the context of the present discussion. What I am concerned with here is the expression of Jenks' ideas in his actions as an international official.

37 Jenks, C. Wilfrid, The Proper Law of International Organisations (London: Stevens; Dobbs Ferry: Oceana, 1962), p. 113Google Scholar.

38 See for example, Jenks, C. Wilfrid, Trade Union Freedom (London: Stevens, 1957)Google Scholar.

39 I have attempted to analyse the ILO as a political system in Chapter 4 of Cox, R.W. and Jacobse, Harold K.n et. al., The Anatomy of Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), pp. 102–38Google Scholar.

40 For example, as developed in Dahrendorf, Ralf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1959)Google Scholar. Original German edition published 1957. Dahrendorf did not use the term “tripartism.”

41 Bendix, Reinhard, Work and Authority in Industry (New York: John Wiley, 1956)Google Scholar compares managerial ideologies in Britain and Russia during the nineteenth century and in the United States and the German Democratic Republic in recent times. He does not use the term corporatism, but his analysis points to the characteristics I have linked to this concept (fn. 7), in particular, managerial authority, bureaucratized relations between management and labor, and a doctrine of harmony of interests. I have distinguished (fn. 7) between corporatism in production relations, and corporatism in the form of the state.

42 Evidence of worker protest in the United States was referred to above (fn. 11). The challenge during 1976 to the leadership of the United Steelworkers of America, which had shown a particular propensity for integration within the structures of the corporative state, may be seen as evidence of opposition to the corporative state among American workers.

43 Dunlop, John, Industrial Relations Systems (New York: Holt-Dryden, 1958)Google Scholar.

44 Kerr, Clark, Dunlop, John T., Harbison, Frederick H., and Myers, Charles A., Industrialism and Industrial Man (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

45 Issued by the International Institute for Labour Studies as Future Industrial Relations: An Interim Report (IILS: Geneva, 1972)Google Scholar.

46 From a lecture at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, October 27, 1969, published in Annals of International Studies, 1970 (by the Alumni Association of the Graduate Institute of International Studies: Geneva, 1970), p. 60. Jenks was obviously pleased with this passage because he quoted it in his address of welcome to the Congress of the International Industrial Relations Association (ILO Press release, 1 September 1970). The speech by Jenks to the ILO staff was distributed in ILO Circular, No. 61, 3 June 1970.

47 Affonso, Almino, “El sindicato campesino agente de cambio,” Boletin 8 (IILS: Geneva, 1971)Google Scholar. Affonso, at the time of writing the article, was living in exile in Chile, employed by the United Nations as a technical assistance expert. Philip Agee, a former CIA agent, wrote much later (in 1975) that the CIA had joined with the Brazilian ambassador in Montevideo, where Affonso spent the first period of his exile after the overthrow of the Goulart Government, to have Affonso expelled from Uruguay. See Philip Agee, pp. 402, 405, 408.

48 verbatim, Draft record of the meeting of the Board of the Institute held on 4 04 1972Google Scholar.

49 In my letter of resignation, dated June 12, 1972, I went into the issue of intellectual independence in some detail and indicated a series of incidents which in my judgment cumulatively negated that independence and made it impossible for me to continue as director. I also made the point that criticism of accepted doctrine could be helpful towards enabling an international organization like the ILO to adjust to the demands of a changing world. (This point was taken up by Georges-Henri Martin, editor, in La Tribune de Geneve, June 16, 1972.) The term nihil obstat had been habitually used by Jenks to refer to what he considered to be a director-general's prerogative to pass judgment on any writing for an audience by an ILO official. He had used it specifically in seeking to prevent me from publishing the chapter about the ILO I had written for Cox, Robert W. and Jacobson, Harold K. and others, The Anatomy of Influence: Decision Making in International Organization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973)Google Scholar. The term was taken up by the new director of the Institute who used it in a letter to a staff member requiring him to submit all his writings for official approval. ILO publications policy operated under such constraints as the prohibition on publishing anything about a country that was not written by a national of that country–a rule that was interpreted (as the fuss over the Affonso article showed) to mean a national who was persona grata with the government.

50 Patterson, Peter, “ICI's Last Stand, ” New Statesman, 1 12 1972, pp. 806–07Google Scholar.

51 Hanna, Vincent, “Storm grows as ICI fights off unions, ” Sunday Times, 3 06 1973Google Scholar.

52 See fn. 37.

53 The fact that an organization like the ILO disposes of what in local politics would be called patronage can also act as an incentive to conformity. There have been numbers of cases of members of the Governing Body being appointed to ILO staff jobs. Anyone who had such a future in mind would want to keep his slate clean with the organization's executive head. To take a public position on some policy issue is one thing, but to antagonize a director-general in a personnel matter he considered to lie within his discretionary domain would be quite another. To take just one case of this kind of relationship, the directorships of the ILO's branch offices have very frequently been filled by former members of the ILO Governing Body, when they retire from their national civil service jobs. The London office in particular has been filled by a succession of retired government members of the Governing Body. These are all, like Brutus, honourable men, and no one imputes wrong-doing on their part. But the practice certainly creates expectations hardly conducive to pursuing issues that would turn out to be unpopular with an executive head. Appointments to the Paris Office of the ILO have been an exception, in that the French Government very early acquired control over them. The importance of the question may be gauged from the fact that this assertion of control by the French government in the 1930s provoked the resignation of the ILO's then extcutive head. The practice whereby an executive head can appoint members of his executive board to jobs—and especially postretirement jobs—in the organization constitutes one of the ways in which high office-holders in international institutions can influence those to whom they are formally accountable. These same office-holders are not, of course, powerful in their own right, but their relative freedom from accountability enhances the facility with which they can act as agents of hegemony.

54 ILO, Towards full employment: a programme for Colombia, prepared by an inter-agency team organized by the International Labour Office (Geneva, 1970)Google Scholar.

55 Tripartite World Conference on Employment, Income Distribution and Social Progress and the International Division of Labour, Employment, Growth and Basic Needs: A One-World Problem. Report of the Director-General of the International Labour Office (ILO: Geneva, 1976)Google Scholar

56 Indications of official United States displeasure with the ILO staff in regard to the WEP are to be found in articles by Raskin, A.H. in The New York Times, 06 17, 18, and 19, 1976Google Scholar. In the article of June 17, Raskin wrote: “The government, employer and worker representatives in the United States delegation to the job conference made no secret from the start that [sic] their belief that the position papers prepared by the ILO staff have a strong Marxist bias and that the probable affect [sic] of a program based on them would be a sharing of poverty rather than a general lifting of economic standards.“ An editorial in The New York Timesof June 16, 1976, referred to “ridiculous position papers by the ILO staff.” The US government delegate told the conference his government “was not in accord with the basic needs strategy as formulated in the Conference document” and that the report prepared for the conference (see fn. 55) “did not pay sufficient attention to the need for individual initiative, free enterprise, and a market economy such as had contributed to the growth of his country.” (ILO World Employment Conference, Geneva, 4–17 06 1976, Summary Record 5 p. V/9)Google Scholar.Such opposition to the ILO staff proposals put the United States delegation in a minority position, although US delegates aligned themselves with a larger body of conciliatory western industrial country opinion in the negotiating process. The United States worker representative was Irving Brown (fn. 18), who was also the US labor member of the Governing Body.

57 ILO, World Employment Conference, Geneva, 4–17 06 1976, Summary Record 20. Report of the Committee of the WholeGoogle Scholar.

58 Griffin's, Keith, The Political Economy of Agrarian Change: An Essay on the Green Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974)Google Scholar shows the depth of his analysis of the rural problem in the Third World. His resignation from the ILO was commented on in The Guardian (October 6, 1976) by Rod Chapman, who wrote: “Tripartism is one of the sacred cows of the ILO but a number of officials argue that a fetish with tripartism means that concepts such as a world employment programme to help the rural poor in developing countries are given a back seat.” The article noted a disposition of the ILO to please the US and added that “The ILO may even be anticipating objections that the U.S. will not make for fear of being isolated.” When the ILO Governing Body met soon after this article had appeared, Griffin was a target of criticism by Joe Morris, the Canadian labor delegate, and by Irving Brown, the US labor delegate.

59 Gossip circulated in Geneva ILO circles during the Summer of 1976 that John Dunlop might again become US Secretary of Labor, this time in a future Carter administration. Whatever probability they accorded such gossip, top ILO administrators were inclined to be helpful regarding Dunlop's interest in the IIRA. This may be seen as an instance of hegemonic influence at work through bureaucratic decisions. That the rumours were not without foundation became clear late in 1976, when Dunlop emerged as the leading candidate for Secretary of Labor in the Carter cabinet, strongly backed by Meany and the AFL-CIO. His appointment was blocked when it encountered strong opposition from groups representing women and Blacks who criticized Dunlop's record on equal employment opportunity. (See Shanahan, Eileen in The New York Times, 12 11, 1976.)Google Scholar