The International Society for Labour and Social Security Law is an international association whose purpose is to study labour and social security law at the national and international level, to promote the exchange of ideas and information from a comparative perspective, and to encourage the closest possible collaboration among academics, lawyers, and other experts within the fields of labour and social security law.
For many of those active in issues in the workplace, the internationalization of labor law and relations is becoming a reality. To highlight just a few areas in this field of growing attention to the global legal landscape, those in academia work on issues of comparative labor and employment law, union lawyers consider international aspects of comprehensive corporate campaigns in support of the objectives of their clients, and management attorneys are increasingly called upon to give advice on the international ramifications of the employment policies of their employer clients.
In support of this work, a number of legal organizations have an international focus. The ISLSSL is one of them. Founded in 1958, the ISLSSL is composed of national affiliates whose members are scholars, union and management lawyers, judges, government officials, arbitrators, industrial relations and human resources specialists, and others interested in promoting international exchange of ideas and information and in developing collaboration among experts in the fields of labor, employment and employee benefits law.
The ISLSSL conducts a World Congress every three years and Regional Congresses (open to registrants from all regions) during the interim years. These meetings allow members both to combine travel with expanded understanding of how labor and employment law operate elsewhere and explain their system to others. ISLSSL conferences also facilitate development of new personal contacts and promote important scholarship, education and training in the fields of comparative and international labor law, employment law, and related fields.
In recent years, ISLSSL World Congresses were convened in Jerusalem in 2000, in Montevideo in 2003, in Paris in 2006, and in Sydney, Australia in 2009. A World Congress will be hosted in Santiago, Chile in 2012 The ISLSSL maintains several regional branches. Recent Western Hemisphere Regional Congresses have been held in Lima, Peru; Querétaro, Mexico; and in the Dominican Republic. Recent Asian Regional Congresses were hosted in Manilla and Taipai, and recent European Regional Congresses were held in Stockholm and Bologna. In addition, the U.S. Branch sponsored a one day conferences in Chicago in May 2005 and in Philadelphia in 2012.
The U.S. Branch of the ISLSSL and the University of Illinois College of Law publish The Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal, a quarterly law journal which publishes articles in the field of comparative and transnational labor and employment law. The journal publishes comparative analysis articles on labor law, employment policy, labor economics, worker migration, and social security issues. Many articles focus on legal systems in developing countries or post-colonial nations with emerging or new legal systems. The target audience for the journal is academics, practicing attorneys, policy makers, students, workers and labor movement officials and activists. The journal's stated policy is to make the publication readable and of practical value to officials in developing countries.
The U.S. branch maintains a website here. The current members of the Executive Committee are Steven L. Willborn (Chair),George Nicolau, Vice-Chair, and Alvin L. Goldman, Secretary-Treasurer. The ISLSSL can be contacted here.
Famous quotes containing the words society, labor, law, social and/or security:
“Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.... How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“The habits of our whole species fall into three great classes—useful labour, useless labour, and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious; and to it all the products of labor rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of its just rights. The only remedy for this is to, as far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness out of existence.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The American people owe it to themselves, and to the cause of free Government, to prove by their establishments for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge, that their political Institutions ... are as favorable to the intellectual and moral improvement of Man as they are conformable to his individual and social rights.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)