Welcome

Continuing the Struggle will convene scholars and practitioners mark the one hundredth anniversary of the first International Labor Conference (ILC), which was held in the Pan American Union Building in Washington, D.C., under the nascent International Labor Organization (ILO), and is among the events that will be held worldwide in celebration of the ILO centenary.   This event will be both retrospective and prospective in focus. It will look back over a century of ILO history, assess the ILO’s legacy, and consider the present state and possible future of the ongoing global struggle for workers’ rights.

It will look back to analyze and evaluate a century of efforts to advance workers’ rights around the globe. It will look forward to ponder the ways in which global supply chains, financialization, and the growth of the “gig” economy and other forms of non-standard work challenge the ILO system and raise questions about the very definition of employers and employees and the basis of labor relations. We seek to bring scholars and practitioners together to consider the lessons of the last century’s struggle for workers’ rights and to inform those who are carring that struggle on to a new century.

The conference, hosted by Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor & the Working Poor, is the product of a collaboration of many people and co-sponsoring organizations, including the ILO’s Washington DC Office, the Penn State Center for Global Workers’ Rights, Department of Feminist Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the Center for Global Migration Studies at the University of Maryland.

Our planning committee is in formation. If you are interested in joining us in the planning this important event, please let us know.

Planning Committee:

Mark Anner, Pennsylvania State University
Eileen Boris, University of California at Santa Barbara
Tula Connell, Solidarity Center
Leon Fink, editor, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History
Julie Greene, University of Maryland
Jill Jensen, University of Redlands
Joseph A. McCartin, Georgetown University
Guilherme Machado Dray, University of Lisbon
Jennifer Mansey, ILO-USA
Nancy Raquel Mirabal, University of Maryland
Uma Rani, ILO, Geneva
Jeff Wheeler, AFGE and Georgetown University
Lane Windham, Georgetown University

Sponsors:

Harassment and Misconduct

The Continuing the Struggle conference will be held on Georgetown University’s campus, and all Georgetown University policies will apply to the conference, including the Sexual Misconduct policy and Policy on Harassment.  We urge all conference participants to familiarize themselves with these policies.