Changes in the world of work and the use of tech­nol­o­gy have led to the ero­sion of unions, re­gion­al­ly and world­wide.

This was re­vealed by the di­rec­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ILO) Caribbean of­fice­Dr Joni Mus­abayana who spoke to the me­dia fol­low­ing a sym­po­sium on labour dis­pute res­o­lu­tion at the Hilton Trinidad yes­ter­day.

In shar­ing some glob­al fig­ures, he said union­i­sa­tion col­lec­tive­ly is now be­low ten per cent.

“In the pub­lic sec­tor it is a bit high­er, but it is al­so de­clin­ing be­cause we are see­ing the rise in con­tract work­ers even in the pub­lic ser­vice so the change in na­ture in work and the in­creas­ing use of tech­nol­o­gy is di­rect­ly hav­ing an im­pact on the union­i­sa­tion rate,” Mus­abayana ex­plained.

De­spite these chal­lenges, he is ad­vis­ing the union move­ment to be­come more in­no­v­a­tive to sus­tain and at­tract mem­bers.

On what is the ob­jec­tive of the sym­po­sium, the ILO di­rec­tor said is how jus­tice can be brought clos­er to home for the ma­jor­i­ty of work­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that are at the bot­tom of the in­come pyra­mid.

“We are al­so dis­cussing how tech­nol­o­gy can be used to en­sure that there is quick and ef­fi­cient ac­cess to jus­tice. So, we are hop­ing that out of this there will be the voice of the Caribbean on what dis­pute res­o­lu­tion should look like. There is a glob­al event in Feb­ru­ary 2025 and we are hop­ing the con­clu­sions from this meet­ing can be tak­en to that event as the voice of the Caribbean,” he de­tailed.

Mean­while, in a state­ment, the ILO said, “To­day, 30 labour of­fi­cials from across the Caribbean will an­nounce their joint com­mit­ment to strength­en­ing their na­tion­al labour dis­pute res­o­lu­tion in­sti­tu­tions and process­es at the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny of Mak­ing Labour Jus­tice Ac­ces­si­ble to All: ILO sub­re­gion­al sym­po­sium on dis­pute res­o­lu­tion in the Caribbean.”

Dur­ing the sym­po­sium, the of­fi­cials will adopt a se­ries of out­comes that will serve as a roadmap for ac­cel­er­at­ing im­prove­ments in their na­tion­al labour jus­tice frame­works to achieve fair, ef­fec­tive, and sus­tain­able dis­pute res­o­lu­tion sys­tems.

The agree­ment will re­sult from their de­lib­er­a­tions dur­ing the sym­po­sium, dur­ing which they shared best prac­tices and knowl­edge to find so­lu­tions to bar­ri­ers such as lim­it­ed ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, in­de­pen­dence, and ac­count­abil­i­ty, as well as scarce re­sources, com­plex pro­ce­dur­al re­quire­ments, and in­ad­e­quate reme­dies.

—An­drea Perez-Sobers