Mission Statement

An overview of the challenges:

The world of work is diverse and is constantly adapting to meet new challenges. Elements within it - such as the health and safety environment, the impact of technology, and what training and skills are needed - are constantly changing.

Frequently, these changes can bring about conflicts and disputes between workers and employers that could lead to unsettling situations. Managing these situations in order to bring about conflict resolution requires:

• relevant labour laws
• effective social dialogue and
• efficient and responsive labour administration

These are essential in order to meet the needs of workers, employers and their representative organizations. The process of continuous change in the world of work poses enormous challenges to:

• institutions,
• legal frameworks,
• collective bargaining,
• and other practices and procedures that govern the workplace and the labour market.

The services provided by the ILO:

Through its social dialogue, labour law and labour administration activities, the ILO promotes an integrated approach to these key components of labour market and workplace governance by providing services that:

• strengthen legal frameworks, institutions, machinery and processes of tripartite and bipartite social dialogue and promote sound industrial relations at national, sectoral, enterprise and sub-regional levels;
• increase the number of member States which base their labour laws and other employment-related legislation on ILO standards and advice and use a tripartite consultative process in the preparation of such legislation;
• strengthen labour administrations in their policy-making capacity, in their role in the implementation of decent work policies and the enforcement of labour laws;
• assist member States to establish and strengthen labour courts, industrial tribunals and dispute resolution mechanisms so that individual and collective disputes are dealt with efficiently, effectively and equitably;
• integrate gender into all aspects of social dialogue, labour law and labour administration;
• increase the participation of employers' and workers' organisations in economic and social policy-making in regional or sub-regional groupings and enhance links with relevant international institutions.

How DIALOGUE works:

As part of this integrated approach, these services are provided by a system of overlapping teams:

• thematic (Labour Legislation, Social Dialogue and Labour Administration),
• regional (Asia, Africa, Europe, Africa)

This structure is meant to reflect the realities of the world of work. Labour Law, Labour Administration and Social Dialogue provide the basic infrastructure that allows effective governance of the world of work and must therefore work in a complementary and integrated way.