ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES
Inter-American Council for Integral Development
(CIDI)
XV INTER-AMERICAN CONFERENCE
OF MINISTERS OF LABOR
September 11-13, 2007
Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago
OEA/Ser.K/XII.15.1
TRABAJO/INF.11/07
13 September, 2007
Original: English
Remarks by the Minister Fitzgerald Hinds,
Ministry of National Security of the Trinidad and Tobago
at the inaugural Session of the XV Inter-American Conference
of Ministers of Labour
The Honourable Javier Lozano Alarcon, Minister of Labour and Social Welfare of Mexico and Chair
of the Fourteenth Inter-American Conference of Ministers of Labour;
Distinguished Ministers of Labour of the Americas;
Cabinet colleagues and other Ministers of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago;
Your Excellency José Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States
(OAS);
Your Excellency Juan Somavía, Director General of the International Labour Organization (ILO);
Members of the diplomatic corps;
Mr. Carl Francis, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Labour and other Permanent Secretaries of the
various Ministries of Government.
Distinguished representatives of the OAS, ILO and other international, as well as regional
organizations;
Esteemed representatives of the Trade Union and business sectors;
Specially invited guests and observers;
Members of the media;
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is with great honour and more than usual pleasure that I welcome you to the ‘Land of the
Hummingbird,’ and the home of the limbo and steelpan, Trinidad and Tobago!
2
To all of you esteemed dignitaries and participants, who have travelled from different parts of this
Hemisphere and the wider world, to share in this Fifteenth Inter-American Conference of Ministers
of Labour (IACML), we are most grateful and appreciative of your prescence and value highly the
time you have taken to be with us over the next two days.
Please accept sincere apologies on behalf of the Honourable Minister of Labour and Small and
Micro Enterprise Development, Senator The Honourable Danny Montano, who, because of his
Parliamentary obligations is unable to be here at this time. You can be assured that as soon as his
business there is completed he will be with you.
I have been asked to convey his deepest regrets and further assurances of his highest regard. For us
in Trinidad and Tobago it is a privilege to host this Conference.
The Conference brings together Ministers of Labour and other important social partners, to shape the
Hemispheric labour agenda.
For my own part, while I labour long and hard, I am not a Minister of Labour, but I too feel honoured
to be here at this inauguration ceremony.
Allow me also, on behalf of the Government and people of Trinidad and Tobago to commiserate
with those countries that faced the force of Hurricane Felix.
We are aware that Honduras,
Nicaragua, Mexico and Jamaica perhaps suffered the most.
We wish you a prompt and
comprehensive recovery.
The hosting of the Fifteenth Inter-American Conference of Ministers of Labour (IACML) by
Trinidad and Tobago is a momentous occasion for us in this country and the rest of the Caribbean,
and indeed in the history of the IACML. It represents a number of “firsts” and also, tremendous
opportunities. It is the first Inter-American Conference of Ministers of Labour to be hosted in the
Caribbean! This gives us an opportunity to reciprocate the hospitality and generosity that our
colleagues in Latin America and Canada have demonstrated time and again at previous meetings.
More significantly, it provided the opportunity for the first visit to the Caribbean by the DirectorGeneral of the ILO, His Excellency, Juan Somavía. It is an honour to have you here with us in Port
of Spain. We hope that this visit sets the stage for future visits to ours and the other islands of the
Caribbean.
The Fifteenth IACML is also the first Conference to follow-up on the employment and labour
mandates of the Fourth Summit of the Americas, held in Mar del Plata, Argentina in November
2005. The Ministers of Labour of the Hemisphere have taken the mantle of responsibility to work
towards achieving the employment and labour goals, embodied in the Declaration and Plan of Action
of Mar del Plata. This is reflected in the industrious and critical agenda we will develop for the next
two years, once the draft 2007 Declaration and Plan of Action of Port of Spain is approved.
This agenda, reflects our understanding that the biggest challenge to peace and development is
poverty. The truism expressed in the ILO’s Declaration of Philadelphia that “Poverty anywhere
constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere,” resonates powerfully, when one considers that some
74 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean are reported as living on less than US$2 per
day!
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The Director-General of the ILO in his 2003 Report “Working out of Poverty,” noted that work is
the best route out of poverty. To complement this, the Ministers participating in the 2007 high-level
segment of the United Nations Economic and Social Council in July, reaffirmed that the promotion
and protection of full enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, are essential
in any sensible effort at the eradication of hunger and poverty.
In light of this, decent work, which embodies employment generation and the promotion of the rights
of workers, represents both a goal and the most effective instrument for improving the living
conditions of workers and their families and their participation in the benefits of material and social
progress.
I am happy to report to this gathering, that in Trinidad and Tobago we are reporting near full
employment, with unemployment down to 5%. Our workforce is now about 640,000 persons of a
1.3million population.
It is clear that we must work together to make ‘decent work’ more than an ‘attractive catch phrase’
but rather, a reality for all workers in our Hemisphere.
At the Tripartite Caribbean Employment Forum held in Barbados in October last year, the social
partners in our region took a bold step forward in discussing ways of realizing the “decent work”
agenda. An action-oriented approach was adopted, in keeping with the mandates of this ‘Decade of
Promoting Decent Work in the Americas’ declared at the Sixteenth Americas Regional Meeting and
guided by the four strategic objectives of the Decent Work Agenda. The decision to embark on
developing and implementing country-specific Decent Work Country Programmes, with the able
assistance of the ILO, demonstrates the commitment in our region to make decent work a social
reality.
A prerequisite for realizing the Decent Work Agenda and making decent work central to social and
economic development, is the incorporation of this goal within national planning frameworks. This
will not only ensure that there is greater policy integration and coherence, but also fosters greater
inter-agency collaboration and tripartite partnerships in achieving the goal of decent work. I am
pleased to state that in Trinidad and Tobago, decent work features as a major goal in the country’s
operational plan for our long-term development strategy, which we call “Vision 2020”.
The aspiration is to cause our country to achieve developed-country status by the year 2020. Labour
is seen as a core element in the five development pillars this our aspiration for the achievement of
Vision 2020.
The five pillars are: (i)
developing innovative people,
(ii)
nurturing a caring society,
(iii)
enabling competitive business,
(iv)
investing in sound infrastructure and
(v)
the environment and promoting effective government.
In promoting effective government, one of the strategies that we have identified in Trinidad and
Tobago is that of maintaining a stable industrial relations climate supported by a legislative
framework that protects fundamental rights, promotes decent work and reduces the decent work
deficit.
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The importance of an adequate legislative framework in promoting the decent work agenda cannot
be overemphasized. It is self-evident that Man ….is the most terrible of all, when he lives without
law and justice. This includes social justice at every level, including international economic
relations.
The Government of Trinidad and Tobago has given serious attention to the modernization of labour
laws and perhaps our greatest progress to date, has been in the area of Occupational Safety and
Health. The Occupational Safety and Health Act, 2004 as amended and proclaimed in 2006 has
ushered in a new era of occupational safety and health and has proven to be a revolutionary and
model law.
In this, as well in our economic and social programmes we relentlessly pursue social justice, and the
goal of poverty eradication.
Needless to say, the challenge of achieving decent work in this part of the region is more robust,
when one considers the fact that, today, twelve of our Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Member
States are no longer operating in isolation, but rather are part of an integrated regional market, that
will soon be characterized by the free movement of goods, services capital and people of labour.
As some of you may be aware, in January 2006, these twelve Member States established the
CARICOM Single Market component of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy, as a first step
towards attaining - improved standards of living, full employment, enhanced levels of
competitiveness and increased productivity. While the CARICOM Single Market seeks to provide
solutions to a number of issues specific to the small island states of the Caribbean, it also poses
significant challenges and opportunities with respect to labour including the management of
migration, human resource development and utilization, social protection, harmonization of labour
legislation and strengthening the capacities of Ministries of Labour. An attempt has been made to
address these and other challenges facing the Western Hemisphere in the draft Declaration and Plan
of Action of Port of Spain 2007.
We are confident that as a Region, we have the capacity to achieve all these lofty ideals for the
benefit of our people. We are also confident that this Conference will take us closer to this
achievement.
In closing, I wish to take this opportunity, on behalf of Minister Montano, to thank the Ministers of
Labour and senior labour officials who worked in the preparatory stages of this Fifteenth IACML.
They have set the stage for a very successful Conference.
The Government of Trinidad and Tobago appreciates the opportunity you have given to us to host
and chair the Fifteenth IACML.
We hope that you enjoy your stay in our country as we try to make it as productive and enjoyable as
our experience in yours.
God Bless and I thank you.
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