The International Labour Organization (ILO) is also celebrating its birthday in 2019, a well-rounded 100th milestone indeed!
Set up as the first specialised agency of the UN - to advance social justice and promote decent work by setting international labour standards - ILO has today 186 members.
Precisely 50 years ago, it received the Nobel Peace Prize for improving fraternity and peace among nations, pursuing decent work and justice for workers, and providing technical assistance to other developing nations.
Faced with new challenges, particularly the impact of Industry 4.0 on the very nature of employment, the ILO has commemorated its founding by establishing the Global Commission on the Future of Work.
"I well remember that in those days the ILO was still a dream. To many, it was a wild dream. Who had ever heard of governments getting together to raise the standards of labour on an international plane? Wilder still was the idea that the people themselves who were directly affected - the workers and the employers of the various countries - should have a hand with government in determining these labour standards," US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said about the ILO.
A whole age passed, but the ILO strives after realising that dream.
