Summary

Regulating decent working conditions is only partly accomplished through the ratification of international labour standards and the adoption of national labour laws in line with these standards. Ultimately, these standards and laws need to be translated into practice at the enterprise level for the benefit and protection of workers and as a contribution to sustainable and productive workplaces. As such, the ILO has launched a project to work with governments and their labour inspectorates across the globe, including that of the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).

As part of this project the ILO works to bolster national systems of labour inspection so they may implement and employ strategic planning, training programmes, tools, and resources that comply with international labour standards.

Objectives

• Improve existing enforcement mechanisms, particularly among labour inspectorates;
• develop innovative and effective approaches to promote labour law compliance;
• facilitate collaboration with related government services, employers' and workers' organizations as well as public or private institutions engaged in compliance activities;
• support improved occupational safety and health outcomes in the workplace for sustainable and productive enterprises;
• develop the institutional and human capacity of labour inspection systems in order to strengthen workplace compliance with international labour standards; and
• improve the effectiveness of government and social partner actions to protect workers from unacceptable forms of work.

Activities

• Establish or strengthen labour administration systems so that up-to-date registers, gender-disaggregated data as well as statistics concerning conditions of employment and work by enterprise are available, based on internationally-standardized definitions;
• improve the planning, monitoring and evaluation function of labour inspectorates to maximize the impact of limited resources;
• promote the ratification of the governance Conventions, particularly the Labour Inspection Convention (No. 81) and Labour Inspection (Agriculture) Convention No. 129;
• design national budgeted training strategies for all the career stages of a labour inspector;
• build the sustainability of national training capacities through training of trainer activities based on an ILO International Training Centre (ITC-ILO) course developed uniquely for this purpose;
• direct training for labour inspectors as well as other related officials and actors in various technical areas based primarily on the ITC-ILO curriculum on labour inspection, adapted to the national contexts;
• assist labour inspectorates to co-operate with other relevant government services for the purposes of information sharing, joint strategic planning, training, exchange of good practices, awareness raising campaigns and cost sharing; and
• strengthen or introduce social dialogue between labour inspectorate officials and employers and workers as well as their organizations.

Outcomes

• Strengthen the capacity of labour inspectorates to improve institutional effectiveness as a necessary precondition towards achieving workplace compliance;
• develop or improve the capacity of inspection staff and social partners to instil the individual knowledge and skills required to deliver workplace compliance; and
• strengthen cooperation between various actors in the area of workplace compliance and collective action as a complementary means towards achieving workplace compliance.