Latest News

10/14/2004

Press Release

Regional Trade Unionists to Focus on Trade Matters

The United States Agency for International Development's Latin American and Caribbean Trade Project (LAC Trade) is among agencies supporting a regional meeting aimed at informing Caribbean trade unionists on issues relating to regional integration as well as external trade negotiations.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), Programme for the Promotion of Management-Labour Cooperation (PROMALCO), the Caribbean Regional Negotiation Network (CRNM) and the Caribbean Conference of Labour (CCL), are hosting the meeting under the theme “Regional Integration and Implications for the Labour Movement”. The October 18-20 meeting will be held at the Krasnapolsky Hotel, Suriname.

Organisers said the meeting affords workers' representatives the opportunity to interface with the CRNM to examine how to ensure that the views of labour are accounted for in external trade negotiations. Unionists will also get an opportunity to examine the questions related to the Free Trade Area of the Americas, regional free movement of labour, migration and the temporary movement of service providers under the General Agreement on Trade Services definition.

By the end of the three-day meeting, it is also envisaged that the trade unionists would have formulated an approach to ensuring job security in respect to the movement of labour and would have identified ways to strengthen the role of the trade union movement in the integration process.

Two trade unionists from each Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member state have been invited to the meeting.