Kingston (ILO News) Around 150 representatives from governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations, academia and civil society organizations from all over the region, participated today in a broad discussion focused on what the future of work would look like in the Caribbean and how we want to shape it.

In opening of the Caribbean Future of Work Forum, the ILO Director-General, Mr Guy Ryder, recognized the speed, depth and scale of the transformative change currently taking place in the world of work. He said we need to understand these processes and ask ourselves, “How do we shape these processes of change?”.

He mentioned four mega-drivers that influences the world of work:

1. Demography, with both ageing populations like in the Caribbean and populations of youth abundance, which both have major impacts for social protection systems, as well as migration and mobility across countries and regions.
2. Technology and the Industry 4.0 is the most commonly cited with both fears and hopes for jobs.
3. Climate Change and the mutual impact of the world of work on Climate Change and vice versa. It had become clear that the time was ripe to make environmental sustainability part of the socio-economic agenda of the ILO.
4. Globalization that for long had been taken for granted but that now was put into question as the obvious way to organize the world of work in the future.

“Standard forms of employment are becoming anything but standard in the world, only accounting for 25% of jobs in the world,” said Mr Ryder during the opening of the Forum in Kingston. “This is a debate about policy. How Governments, Employers and Trade Unions bring their efforts together to create the Future of Work we want – Shaping the Future of Work to a future of Social Justice”.

Mr Wayne Chen, President, CEC, in his greetings said “Globalization had had its casualties and people are feeling very insecure” but that globally the numbers for the last 30 years actually told us we live in a more peaceful and prosperous world than ever before. He stated the CEC was commitment to Social Dialogue and decent work in the Caribbean, through a partnership between enterprises, labour and the state.

Ms Jennifer Issacs-Dotson brought greetings recognizing that “more and more quality jobs were disappearing, even from the public sector”. She said too often productivity was only looked upon to be a worker responsibility, when in fact the enabling factors such as opportunities for skilled workers in enterprises are equally important. She said that the Paris Agreement on Climate Change provided with new opportunities for integrated approaches to human development. 

The Hon. Shahine Robison said Jamaica had recognized it can “no longer be content with reacting to developments” but must be proactive. She recognized that “economic growth means nothing if people are left out”. However, she observed a 2-tier divide in society between those who have and those who have not. She called for adequate collaborative responses and to build on the economic optimism to realize the potential the country’s economic growth programmes, including labour market reform.

Following the opening, three participatory panel discussions explored:

1. Decent Work for all – Where will the jobs in the Caribbean come from and how to ensure they are of quality for the workers, both women and men, and society?
2. Governance of work – How can the Caribbean respond to the erosion of established regulatory framework. How to make structures effective in this emerging context?
3. Organization of work and production – What are the changes in the way that businesses work in the Caribbean and what are the implications for what it means to be an employer or an employee?

This Meeting comes in the context of the “Future of Work Initiative”, launched by the ILO in 2015 that invites all member States to undertake “Future of Work” dialogues based around four conversations on work and society, decent jobs for all, the organization of work and production, and the governance of work. Such national dialogues are already taking place in some 150 countries. The feed-back will inform its way forward for the ILO as it enters its second centenary in 2019. 
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For further details please visit: www.ilo.org/cfow2017 or www.ilo.org/caribbean 

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or contact:
Averlon Toussaint
toussaint@ilo.org
+1(868)623-7178/7704 Ext. 411