LEADERSHIP AND ADMINISTRATION IN THE ICFTU: A NEW PHASE OF DEVELOPMENT
| Date | 01 October 1963 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1963.tb00987.x |
| Published date | 01 October 1963 |
| Author | John P. Windmuller |
LEADERSHIP AND ADMINISTRATION
IN
THE ICFTU
:
A
NEW AHASE OF DEVELOPMENT
JOHN
P.
WINDMWLLER~
THE
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) was
founded in
1949
by
a
group of national trade union centres from
countries all over the world, many of whom had abandoned
the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), created in
1945,
for
being hopelessly under Communist domination.’ In July,
1962,
the
ICFTU held its Seventh World Congress in Berlin. It brought together
delegates representing
141
organizations in
109
countries and territories
with a total claimed membership in excess of
56,000,000.
The proceed-
ings of this Congress, which were remarkably free of discord by com-
parison with previous congresses, demonstrated rather impressively that
the ICFTU had gone far in overcoming the uncertainty, strife, and
frustration
so
characteristic of the infant years of many labour organiza-
tions. Hopefully looking ahead toward a period of stabilization, General
Secretary Omer Becu in the first report on his stewardship since his
appointment in
1960
predicted that
‘
the coming three years will be ones
of consolidation and further improvement of our methods of work.’a
The Executive Board‘s decision to acquire for the ICFTU Secretariat
an imposing headquarters building in Brussels underlined the transition
from
the organizational to the new administrative phase.
Historically, federated trade union organizations, both national and
international, seem to require some ten to fifteen years to demonstrate
their viability, solidify their institutional structure, and assert their
authority in matters for which they have a particular and inherent
competence. The following instances lend support to this observation.
The American Federation of Labor, formally created in
1886,
first
had to weather the depression
of
the
1890’s
and to vanquish the Knights
of Labor before it could enter upon its period
of
‘unprecedented
expansion
’
from
I
Sg?/
98
In Germany, the
Generulkomrnission,
founded in
1890
as a vaguely defined central organ of the socialist trade
unions, required about fifteen years to assert itself as spokesman for the
trade unions and to obtain acceptance by the fraternal Social Demo-
*
Professor
of
Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.
1
The history
of
the founding of the WFTU, of its breakup, and of the creation of the
ICFTU may be found in Lewis L. Lorwin,
The International Labor Movement:
Histoy, Policies, Outlook,
New York, Harper, 1953, or in my own monogra h,
American
Labor and the International Labor Movement:
1940-1953.
Ithaca, New fork, Cornell
University, 1954.
a
ICFTU,
Report on Activities
1960-1962
and Financial Reports,
Brussels, 1962, p.
PI.
3
Selig Pearlman and Philip Taft.
History
of
Labor in the United States,
1896-1932,
Vol.
IV,
New York, Macmillan, 1935, pp. 11-13.
’47
148
BRITISH
JOURNAL
OF
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
cratic Party of its status as an equal and autonomous organization." At
the ninth meeting of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) in
1876, as B. C. Roberts has recorded,
'
Doubts were expressed as to the
value of Congress, and the suggestion was made that it was a luxury the
trade unions could no longer afford to maintair~.'~ In France, too, the
first years of the
Confe'dtration
Ge'ne'rale
du
Travail
(CGT), founded
in 1895, were 'weak and uncertain,' and it was not until after 1902,
following the merger with the
Fe'de'ration des Bourses du
Travail, that
the CGT entered what one of the foremost students of French labour
has called its
'
heroic period.'6
On the international level, a series of efforts to create an organization
of trade union federations culminated ,in 1903 in the establishment of
the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres. How-
ever, its main problem at
first
was to demonstrate
'
whether
it
would be
able to hold together the different types of trade unionism in the
different countries." Not until ten years after the founding Dublin
conference did the affiliated unions consent to change the organization's
name to the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) 'to
indicate the larger basis to which it was moving.lS
Unlike the CGT and a few other national labour organizations, the
fourteen-year old ICFTU is not destined to have its own
'
heroic age
'.
This would require a crusading spirit, a transcendent unity of purpose,
and an implacably hostile environment. These requisites exist only
partially, certainly not in sufficient measure. The ICFTU will rather
bend its efforts in the years immediately ahead to more prosaic yet still
indispensable tasks
:
helping to organize and educate unions in under-
developed countries, serving with distinction as international labour's
conscience before repressive and totalitarian governments, and render-
ing useful, competent service as a co-ordinating, fund-raising and fund-
dispensing, research, and publicity organization.
It is the purpose of this article to direct attention to the administra-
tive, and therefore chiefly to the internal problems
of
the ICFTU as it
moves into the second stage of its development. These problems will
4
Heinz pf Varain,
Freie Gewerkschaften, Sozialdemokratie, und Staat: Die Politik der
Genera komrnzssron unter der Fuehrung Carl Legiens
(1890-1920).
Duesseldorf, Droste-
Verlag,
1956,
pp.
10-35.
5
The Trades Union Congress:
1868-1929,
London, Allen and Unwin,
1958,
p.
95:
'
This
view was not entertained
by
the more far-sighted trade unionists, but
J.
D. Prior, the
chairman
of
the Parliamentary Committee, felt it necessary
to
go out ofhis way
.
.
.
to
answer these critics and
to
emphasize why there was a continuing need for the Trades
Union Congress and its Parliamentary Committee.'
(Loc.
cit.)
6
Val
R.
Lorwin,
The French Labor Movement,
Cambridge, Harvard University Press,
1954,
p.
24.
7
Lewis L. Lorwin,
Labor and Internationalism,
New York, Macmillan,
19~9,
p.
102.
One writer considers the
igoi
Copenhagen conference as marking the beginning
of
the
organized international trade union movement. See Hans Gottfurcht,
Die
Internationale
Gewerkschaftsbewegung im Weltgeschehen: Geschichte, Probleme, Aufgaben,
Cologne,
Bund Verlag,
1962,
pp.
30-32.
8
Lewis L. Lorwin.
The International Labor Movement: History, Policies, Outlook,
op. cit., p.
36.
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