Founder’s Discount: How Early Membership in the International Labour Organization Constrained Worker Protections in Iran, 1919–1939

Abstract In the interwar period, many industrializing states raised labor standards, introduced worker protections, and established deliberative labor institutions. Iran stands out as a remarkable outlier in this early wave of labor policy. Despite founding membership in the International Labour Organization (ILO), Iran kept labor protections at a bare minimum and workers excluded from decision-making processes altogether. This article proposes that Iranian participation in the ILO itself helped to produce this exclusionary approach to labor. Drawing on original archival sources, I show that Iran was early on positioned within the ILO as a paradigmatic case of “Eastern” underdevelopment − a categorization that legitimated broad exemptions from international labor standards. Iran’s founder’s discount was not simply guaranteed by major powers or ILO flexibility provisions; it was actively appropriated, internalized, and reproduced by Pahlavi state elites. More broadly, the case illustrates how concessions granted during an international organization’s founding period can become durable imprints on member states, locking in practices that run counter to the organization’s own mandate.