ANNEX
First Meeting of Annual Labor Conference, 1919 The place of meeting will be Washington.
The Government of the United States of America is requested to convene the conference.
The International Organizing Committee will consist of seven members, appointed by the United States of America, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Belgium, and Switzerland. The committee may, if it thinks necessary, invite other members to appoint representatives.
Agenda:
- Application of principle of the 8-hours day or of the 48-hours week.
- Question of preventing or providing against unemployment.
- Women's employment.
- Before and after childbirth, including the question of maternity benefit.
- During the night.
- In unhealthy processes.
- Employment of children:
- Minimum age of employment.
- During the night.
- In unhealthy processes.
- Extension and application of the International Conventions adopted at Berne in 1906 on the prohibition of night work for women employed in industry and the prohibition of the use of white phosphorus in the manufacture of matches.
SECTION II.—General Principles
ARTICLE 427.—The High Contracting Parties, recognizing that the well-being, physical, moral, and intellectual, of industrial wage earners is of supreme international importance, have framed, in order to further this great end, the permanent machinery provided for in Section I, and associated with that of the League of Nations.
They recognize that differences of climate, habits, and customs, of economic opportunity and industrial tradition, make strict uniformity in the conditions of labor difficult of immediate attainment. But, holding as they do, that labor should not be regarded merely as an article of commerce, they think that there are methods and principles for regulating labor conditions which all industrial communities should endeavor to apply, so far as their special circumstances will permit.
Among these methods and principles, the following seem to the High Contracting Parties to be of special and urgent importance: