Decent work & vocational training

CONCLUSIONS

22. Decent work is a concept still in evolution, with a deep ethical content, that tends to enhance the importance of workers’ rights and the quality of working conditions. Decent work cannot be but work in sufficient, appropriate, dignified and fair quantity and quality, which includes respect for workers’ rights, earnings and satisfactory working conditions, social protection and a context of trade union freedom and social dialogue.

If training is one of the rights of man and constitutes besides an essential requisite for access to quality employment – even more so within a context of globalisation, regionalisation, widespread technology and the advent of the so-called society of knowledge – it must needs be an essential part of decent work.

Nowadays no decent work can exist without adequate training. In the same manner as the latter is a precondition and component of the former, decent work for its part is a proper environment for ongoing learning, updating and retraining.

23. There is a special dimension to this relationship decent work/training that has not been touched upon in this document. but has to be pointed out. It refers to the globalisation and regionalisation we have just mentioned(51). The Resolution on Development of human resources of the International Labour Conference 2000 also underlines it in paragraph 2, where it says that "it is increasingly accepted that globalisation has a social dimension that calls for a social answer", and that "education and training are components of an economic and social response to globalisation".

Both the European Union and the Mercosur – each in its own way – have dealt with the subject of training as an essential matter, and continue to do so.

We might also sound an alert about the following. If there is no sufficient and decent work to go around in the world, developed countries will see their problems of unwanted immigration grow indefinitely. Not to mention the theoretical issue that globalisation of the economy should also imply globalisation of the labour force.

24. Having accepted that vocational training is part and parcel of the notion of decent work, that it is a precondition for reaching the objective of decent work, and that the latter presupposes access to the former, the methodological conclusion ensues that we must incorporate some training indicators to the instruments for gauging decent work.

Thus, it would be necessary to measure literacy, schooling and induction training indexes. We should also have to measure the frequency and extent of ongoing training and of specific training programmes for groups such as the unemployed, women, young people, etc. It would also be advisable to quantify the degree to which collective bargaining regulates training, and the level of participation by the social players in the management of it.

25. In any case, and going back to conceptual aspects, it is quite clear that in the current framework, wherein education and work tend to converge increasingly, education and training constitute the cornerstone of a decent job.

 

51. As indicated by SEN, Amartya, loc.cit. p.p. 138-139.

The Inter-American Centre for Knowledge Development in Vocational Training (ILO/Cinterfor)
Avda. Uruguay 1238 - Montevideo - Uruguay - Tel: (5982) 908 6023 - 902 0557 - 908 0545 - Fax: (5982) 902 1305
webmaster@cinterfor.org.uy

Copyright © 1996-2008 International Labour Organisation (ILO) - Disclaimer