President of Georgian Trade Unions Confederation Irakli Petriashvili will head the Advisory Board under the Chief Labour Inspector.
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01/04/202112 / 10 / 2018
The ILO-ACTRAV, in cooperation with the Pan-European Regional Council of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-PERC) organized a regional conference for the ITUC-PERC affiliates in the Newly Independent States (NIS) on 26-27 September in Tbilisi. The participants discussed challenges of effective functioning of the labour inspections to supervise implementation of labour and occupational health and safety standards. Taking part were trade union leaders, technical specialists and trade union labour inspectors from Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia.
The ITUC/PERC President Irakli Petriashvili opened the conference. The Georgian Deputy Labour Minister, the President of the country’s Employers’ Association, head of the Parliament’s Human Rights Committee and Georgia’s newly created Labour Inspection Department have also delivered welcoming speeches. The ILO workers’ specialist in the region, senior specialists in the area of international labour norms, labour administration and OSH standards, as well as the PERC executive Secretary, trade union experts from EU member and candidate countries have provided update on the situation in the region, shared their views and positive examples of well-functioning labour administrations with effective tripartite coordination in different countries.
The participants underlined deterioration of the position of the labour inspectorates in most of the countries, driven by labour market deregulation and economic liberalization policies promoted by the International Financial Institutions. These reforms resulted in dilution of labour inspection mandate, negligence of OSH norms and basic labour rights, imposition of moratoriums and limitations to implement unannounced checks, decentralisation or hypercentralisation, insufficient financing and low professional capacities within the inspectorates and reduced trust in public administration.
The meeting underlined following conclusions:
The participants agreed that empowerment of the labour inspections should be high on trade union agenda in the Eastern part of Europe and Central Asia and that based on the conclusions of the conference a strategy and the action plan shall be initiated which would include a joint regional campaign under the PERC umbrella.