Utmost Standard!

Only laborites pay much attention to the International Labor Organisation, that homely neighbor in Geneva of the white-spatted League of Nations. Last week, however, Geneva correspondents "discovered" the I. L. 0. when its 16th Annual Conference of 47 nations occupied the handsome hall just built by the City of Geneva for plenary sessions of the Disarmament Conference (last week sitting in committees). Conscious of their importance, the 324 labor delegates marched bravely in and elected by acclaim as their president a onetime Ontario telegraph keyman, Senator Gideon Decker Robertson, Canadian Labor Minister in the Conservative Cabinet of rich Premier Richard Bedford Bennett.

Keyman Robertson keynoted that "the International Labor Organisation has served and is serving as a perpetual reminder in these times of economic stress that the worker's standard of life and his conditions of labor should be maintained to the utmost possible limits!" (Cheers.)

Statisticians then informed the Conference that "between 20 million and 25 million workers are unemployed in the world today and they have between 40 million and 50 million dependents."

The Conference, comparatively short & snappy, will deliberate for only three weeks, chiefly on three items of agenda:

1) The fight to wipe out fee-charging employment agencies throughout the world--jobs to be obtained instead from State or charitable agencies.

2) World propaganda for old age pensions.

3) Determination of "the minimum age of admission of children to nonindustrial occupations."

Studiously avoiding "radicalism," the International Labor Organisation works under a provision of the Treaty of Versailles (Part XIII). Each participating nation sends four delegates, two representing its Government and the other two Labor and Capital. Recommendations passed by the Conference are of course nonbinding, but it may also adopt draft conventions and these the 55 member nations are bound to submit to their parliaments for adherence or rejection. None of the 31 draft conventions adopted by sessions of the Conference thus far has been ratified unanimously, but 30 of these 31 conventions have been adopted by one or more nations and are binding upon the ratifiers. The 31st and completely unratified draft convention was adopted by the Conference two years ago, sought to create better working conditions for white-collar workers, proverbially friendless and unrepresented in the world's parliaments.

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