Ei-iE

Teachers and education professionals attending the 106th session of the International Labour Conference are going to defend their labour rights in the presence of Governments and employers’ organisations.

From 5-9 June, an Education International (EI) teacher union delegation is attending the annual conference of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Held every year in June in Geneva, Switzerland, under the auspices of the United Nations, this event gathers together representatives of governments and of workers’ and employers’ organisations.

A global labour parliament

The ILC is the global labour parliament where labour policy priorities are discussed, new standards are adopted and their implementation is supervised. This year, the ILO Committee on the Application of Standards will review the implementation of labour standards and cases of trade union rights violations in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, Kazakhstan, Libya, Mauritania, Paraguay, Sudan, Turkey, United Kingdom, Venezuela, and Zambia.

Concerns

Representatives of education unions from Algeria, Botswana and Ecuador, among others, will address the Commission on the Application of Standards to highlight concerns in the education sector. In Turkey, over 28,000 teachers and academics have been dismissed and replaced after the failed coup in July 2016. In Botswana, the Parliament is seeking to convert the teaching sector into an essential service. The Bahraini Teachers’ Association has yet to be re-established after it was dissolved in 2011. Its leaders, Mahdi Abu Dheeb and Jalila Al-Salman, are still subject to a travel ban, preventing them from attending international union meetings.

Other discussions of note will focus on labour migration, decent work for peace and resilience, and fundamental rights at work with a focus on child labour in view of the upcoming UN Conference on the eradication of child labour. EI affiliates will contribute and bring a teachers’ union perspective into the all these debates.

Haldis Holst, EI Deputy General Secretary, will address the ILO conference tomorrow, 8 June.