The economic mandate of the “misnamed” International Labour Organization (ILO) has long been “othered” internationally. The ILO's 1944 constitutional annex, the Declaration of Philadelphia, confirms the ILO's “responsibility … to examine and consider all international economic and financial policies and measures in the light of th[e] fundamental objective” of lasting peace on the basis of social justice. After 1945, through decolonization, and prior to the emergence of a Washington consensus-based neoliberal globalization, the ILO enabled some states to mediate the “social” in economic regulation—that is, to adopt free trade economic liberalism promoted transnationally with social redistribution addressed domestically, also referred to as embedded liberalism. States established and harmonized international labor standards through multilateral processes steeped in an organizational tripartism that made workers’ and employers’ representatives ILO institutional actors alongside governments. At least in the global North, the ILO fostered a high degree of normative convergence nationally, regionally, and on shop floors. For the first Director-General, Albert Thomas, the ILO “taught the world to speak something like the same language on social questions.” Its approach has been nuanced, pragmatic, and transnational, taking leadership on issues like social protection that should also have been—but were not—the focus of other international economic institutions.

International organizations rarely die, but they often become irrelevant. The mere fact of the International Labour Organization's (ILO's) survival thus says little about its accomplishments or impact. Yet the ILO has a rich history of reinventing itself in response to shifts in global labor conditions, and it has responded to those changes with legal and policy innovations that once attracted widespread attention and praise but have recently been met mostly with indifference.

Domestic laws are shaped by myriad global governance projects, which may attract the support of different organizations, promote contrasting socioeconomic visions, and operate at diverse levels and scales. Beyond differences in their whos, whats, and wheres, governance projects are also differentiated by their hows: they may embody different ways of imagining relations between order, authority, and legitimacy; operate through different styles; or deploy different technologies. International legal regimes, which function through a logic of governance that applies norms sanctioned by the political consent of states, have long operated alongside “systems of management and control” drawing their legitimacy from claims of “objective, disinterested scientific knowledge.”

A backlash against the post-Cold War order of liberal globalization has taken hold in the rich North Atlantic countries. Concerns about wages, working conditions, and economic opportunity are central to the critique of international trade agreements of the last three decades. While labor rights have progressively been included in trade agreements, they have done little to reshape workers’ well-being and workplace conditions. The new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) may signal a pivot to a new model requiring reforms of domestic labor law and other issues important to workers. However, there is much more to be done to rebalance the power between capital and labor in trade agreements. In addition, for the United States and other rich countries, reform at home may be equally important.

When contemplating the transnational futures of international labor law, it is worthwhile pausing to reflect on the origins of that body of law and its relationship to the idea of transnationalism itself. Seeking to establish the universality of human problems, Philip Jessup famously defined transnational law as “all law which regulates actions or events that transcend national frontiers,” including both public and private international law as well as “other rules which do not fully fit into such standard categories.” This concept has proven extraordinarily durable, impacting legal theory in a variety of fields, not least transnational labor law. It is noteworthy, however, that Jessup's foundational text makes only a handful of references to the International Labour Organization (ILO) and instead focusses to a much greater extent on problems involving other aspects of international economic relations. This short essay connects and compares Jessup's concept of transnationalism to another conceptual framework in international law, devised at around the same time, which has a more direct lineage in the practice of the ILO and, perhaps, a place in its future development.

Since the 2007 global financial crisis, many have questioned the predominant form of neoliberal capitalism that has underpinned a U.S.-led global economic order since the 1980s. Meanwhile, China's state capitalism, led by the Chinese Communist Party, has been ascendant. Some have even posited a “Beijing Consensus” as an alternative to the “Washington Consensus.” This essay advances the concept of State Capitalism 4.0, which is premised on the Chinese party-state's control over state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private firms, mediated through regulatory and institutional arrangements and the strategic exploitation of technology. I apply this concept to analyse China's approach to transnational labor issues as Chinese enterprises expand their activities abroad and mobilize a growing number of Chinese workers transnationally, especially under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Reflecting on the implications of State Capitalism 4.0 for transnational labor law, I argue that the strategic exercise of state regulatory powers can strengthen labor standards through domestic laws and institutions but is antithetical to a core international labor right: freedom of association.