Trade and Decent Work

Supported by the ILO ACTRAV-ACFTU South-South Cooperation Project, the introductory course not only allows trade unions to gain awareness of the trade environment and the current situation at the global level, but also equip them with key steps that they can take through their work to ensuring that trade agreements (bilateral, regional, global) contain labour provisions that are addressed and explored in the ILO’s International Labour Standards and the Decent Work Agenda. OBJECTIVES By completing the course, participants were expected to be able to: (a) define the varied forms of trade agreements and their purposes; (b) describe the labour situations that have resulted from globalisation and trade liberalisation; (c) discern the impact of trade liberalisation to the labour and industrial Relations, etc.; (d) outline and integrate the principles of key ILO instruments --such as the International Labour Standards, the ILO’s Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work and the Decent Work Agenda -- in the trade agendas; and (e.) elaborate on the role of trade unions in ensuring that proper and adequate labour provisions are included in trade agreements. CONTENT The online course covered four (4) main thematic subjects: (a) rulemaking in trade, (b) trade and labour insures in multilateral trading system, (c) the WTO and labour issues, and (d) the importance o international labour standards (ILS) in trade rules and free trade agreements; (e) the ILO, trade and the decent work work agenda, (f) country lessons and experiences. The two-week course consisted of an estimated 10 hours of synchronous and asynchronous online learning, which included 14 tasks such as participation in webinars, completion of self-guided learning modules, online interaction and collaboration, and submission of assignments application of learning plans’, among others. ECAMPUS The activity was delivered via the eCampus, the online education and training platform of the International Training Centre of the ILO. The platform was used to distribute course information, training material, learning tasks, exchanges of good practices and experiences, feedback and multimedia content.