The project that incorporates a website (www.labourmonitor.org) and a database of violations, was launched in 2015 by the Centre for Social and Labour Rights (TsSTP) with the support from Russia's Confederation of Labour (KTR).

The meeting was attended by representatives of the ILO, TsSTP, KTR and its member organizations – the Russian Seafarers' Union, the Federal Trade Union of Air Traffic Controllers, the Interregional Trade Union "Novoprof," the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the International Union of Food Workers (IUF), as well as lawyers, experts and researchers in the field of social and labour relations.

Organized under the auspices of ILO’s Bureau for Workers 'Activities (ILO/ACTRAV), the event was co-chaired by Sergeyus Glovackas, Senior Specialist in Workers’ Activities at ILO Decent Work Technical Support Team and Country Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Boris Kravchenko, president of Russia's Confederation of Labour.

The presentation ceremony was opened by Dimitrina Dimitrova, Director of the ILO Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. She stressed the importance of the work being done by Russian trade unions to protect workers' rights and ensure the implementation of the core ILO Conventions concerning the freedom of association, as well as the ratification of ILO's new Conventions.

The national monitoring system was presented by Elena Gerasimova, director of the Centre for Social and Labour Rights. This system was established with a view to collecting, processing and analysing the data concerning violations of labour and trade union rights. "In developing the system, our goal was to create a tool which could be used by various trade union organizations in their work. The software has been designed in such a way as to enable users to gather and analyse information on various types of violations."

"What we have now at our disposal is a breakthrough software for collecting the data on violations of labour and trade union rights, the first system of this kind ever launched in the post–Soviet space,” president of Russia's Confederation of Labour Boris Kravchenko said. “By now we already have a lot of violations recorded, including the cases of prosecution of trade union leaders for their activities. The database, which allows us to organize and compile this kind of information, would be a great help to us, it will be one of the most important tools in our work," he added.

"We will promote the national monitoring system across the entire trade union domain, among all those involved in the system of social and labour relationships in our country," the KTR President further stressed.” The representatives of KTR member organizations emphasized the timeliness of creation of the database and expressed their willingness to contribute to the collection, processing and analysing the violations of labour rights.

The participants in the discussion took note of the fact that international organizations were running their own monitoring of the situation concerning the rights of workers and trade unions at the global level. In particular, the ILO publishes reports on the situation involving the freedom of association, the problems of child labour and forced labour and other issues. Also, experts of the International Trade Union Confederation prepare the annual Global Rights Index.

Lejo Sibbel, Senior Specialist in International Labour Standards and Labour Law at the ILO’s Moscow Office, emphasized that Russia’s new national rights monitoring system was important as a means of understanding and assessing the situation involving perceived violations of labour and trade union rights in the Russian Federation.

An opinion was voiced during the discussion that the new national rights monitoring system could also be used to collect information about the violations of workers' rights in other countries – former Soviet Union republics. As an example, coordinator of IUF campaigns Maria Kurzina pointed to the persistent practice of using forced labour, specifically, in the agricultural sector in Central Asian countries.