Have the interventions of the International Labour Organization to the labour markets been effective? - Cases of Argentina and Finland

Abstract: Global economical crisis has set high expectations to national politics. Working issues are highly connected to many political principles and actions. This is why concentrating on the form and efficiency of interventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) can be seen as a very current topic. In this study there are two case countries, Ar-gentina and Finland. In democratic point of view they have fairly similar paths in the field of labour and the activity concerning these issues has been quite noticeable in the past, even though they are in different stage of development.Work is seen as a human right and fair conditions of work are presented through impor-tant international covenants. The ideology of social justice, as presented by John Rawls, is introduced here as the concept is central to the work of the ILO. In order to under-stand the meaning of social justice to the functionality of the ILO and to get a clearer picture of organizational relations in the labour markets, the organizational theoretical approaches by Starbuck and Scherer are brought up. This is also done in order to under-stand whether an international organizational actor, within field that is still seen to be highly under the control of sovereign countries themselves, can work efficiently.There were no directly related former studies found concerning not only the work of national labour organizations but also of the ILO. The indicators are based on most gen-eral and central subjects covered by the International Labour Standards, provided by the ILO. Indicators used to measure the efforts of the countries to appreciate the contents of international covenants are: ratification of international conventions, national legislation and labour organizational structure. The ones used to measure the efficiency of the ILO interventions are: activity of the ILO in the national level, functionality of the complaint system and the number of complaints. By analysing the information found through the indicators is meant to find out if the ILO has had effective interventions to the labour markets of the case countries in 1990s and the early 21st century. The hypothesis is that concerning the developing countries the ILO has more flexibility and power to its inter-ventions, and in question of highly developed and generally democratic countries more challenges are met concerning how to keep the response system active and abreast.