General Invitation

Please Join Us for

Continuing the Struggle: The International Labor Organization (ILO) Centenary and the Future of Global Worker Rights

Washington, DC
November 21-22, 2019

Dear Friends,

We invite you to join us for a conference to mark the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the International Labor Organization (ILO).  We will gather at Georgetown University in Washington, DC on November 21 and 22 for the “Continuing the Struggle: The International Labor Organization (ILO) Centenary and the Future of Global Worker Rights” conference. This gathering will be both retrospective and prospective, and will involve academics and practitioners, including policymakers, union leaders, and leaders of worker rights organizations.

Featured conference speakers will include: Myrtle Witbooi, President of the International Domestic Workers’ Federation (IDWF); Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA); Manuela Tomei, Director, ILO Conditions of Work and Equality Department, Geneva; Cathy Feingold, ITUC Deputy President and director AFL-CIO International Department; Karen Kent, President of UNITE HERE Local 1 in Chicago; Joseph McCartin, Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, Eileen Boris, University of California Santa Barbara; David Weil, Brandeis University; Isabelle Lespinet-Moret, Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne; Sandrine Kott, University of Geneva; Lance Compa, Cornell University and more.

The conference will feature speakers from Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United States, and other nations.

We are finalizing plans to gather for a special evening discussion and event on November 21 at the Organization of American States (OAS) headquarters, which is housed in the Pan American Union building, the site of the first International Labor Conference.

Themes covered during the conference plenaries and panels will include: Global Workers, Global Supply Chains, Global Lives; Gender, Sexuality and Labor Rights; Building Workplace Power and Global Workers’ Rights; and On Shifting Ground: Labor Standards, Policy and the Future of Work.

Registration for the conference is now open at www.iloat100.org.  The website includes information on housing, logistics and registration fees.  Please contact us at kilwp@georgetown.edu with any questions.

We look forward to seeing you in Washington, D.C.!

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