I.L.O. Under Fire

Almost from the moment it was born after World War I, the old League of Nations was doomed to failure largely because the U.S. refused to back it. Now the International Labor Organization, a vestige of the same Treaty of Versailles that set up the League, may die for similar reasons. By the end of this week, the Carter Administration will have to decide whether to keep the U.S. in the I.L.O. or withdraw its heavy support--currently a fourth of the 135-member organization's $80 million annual budget. If the U.S. does withdraw, it would be a severe blow to the Geneva-based I.L.O. and mark the first time that the U.S. has pulled out of any international organization.

In its workaday achievements, the I.L.O. has been successful. It won the NObel Peace Prize on its 50th anniversary in 1969 for its wide-ranging efforts to upgrade the lot of the world's workers. It is involved in vocational training in India and Morocco, management development in Pakistan and Tanzania; it provides technical assistance in building work forces for developing nations that lack economic expertise. The I.L.O. has made 152 recommendations to set international labor standards for working conditions, hours and vacations, and has begun moving on such newer issues as occupational disease and sex discrimination in jobs. I.L.O. specialists helped set up the U.S. Social Security system in 1934.

But for years the I.L.O.'s Communist and Arab member nations have used the organization, and particularly its annual meeting, as a forum for attacks against U.S. policy toward the Middle East and elsewhere. That has dismayed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO, both of which send delegates to I.L.O. meetings.-Says AFL-CIO Boss George Meany: "I have had to sit in plenary sessions with the I.L.O. where they compliment the Director General on his wonderful report. Then they would launch an attack on the United States of America/'

In 1975 the I.L.O., pressured by its anti-Israel bloc, granted the Palestine Liberation Organization observer status at I.L.O. meetings. That prompted then-U.S. Labor Secretary John Dunlop to boycott one I.L.O. meeting. Later, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger voiced concern over the "increasing politicization" of the I.L.O. One example: hasty condemnation of Israel for supposedly mistreating Arab workers in occupied territory. Such lack of due process, said Kissinger, is "in utter disregard of the established procedures and machinery, and is gravely damaging the I.L.O. and its capacity to pursue its objectives in the human-rights field." On Nov. 5, 1975, he wrote a letter to Director General Francis Blanchard, giving the required two-year notice for pulling out of the I.L.O. Unless the Carter Administration acts, the withdrawal becomes effective this week.

In Geneva, I.L.O. staffers in the organization's new $65 million building are expecting the worst from Washington. There are rumors that Director General Blanchard is planning to fire 400 staffers, some of whom get lucrative salaries of from $24,000 to $60,000 annually. Yet no one--not Kissinger two years ago, nor the Carter Administration now, nor even George Meany--seriously wants the U.S. to pull out of the I.L.O., at least permanently. Critics do see a threatened U.S. withdrawal as a prod for necessary reform, the only measure that will goad the organization into getting off its political soapbox. There is a dispute only about when to act. Officials at the State Department and National Security Council want to continue the threat for another year; the Labor Department wants to pull out now. Anti-U.S. rhetoric at I.L.O. annual meetings does not, in the view of even its harshest critics, undo what the I.L.O. has accomplished over the years. But it does divert and distract the organization from its basic business of helping the world's workers. -

-The organization is run by a "tripartite" board consisting of delegates not only from government but from business and labor.

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