OHS experts meeting from the NIS trade unions

A meeting of OHS experts from the NIS trade unions was held on 27 and 28 November 2019 in Chisinau, within the regular activities of PERC Program and Projects, with the financial support of Swedish project “Union to Union”. The meeting was organized with the logistic support from National Confederation of Trade Unions of Moldova.

Experts from Russian Federation, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan participated in the meeting, along with the professional support of ETUI expert Viktor Kempa, as well as Montserrat Mir – Special Advisor in Just Transition Center and Olga Nicolae – PERC Brussels . Participants were welcomed on behalf of trade unions, affiliates of ITUC/PERC, in capacity of the hosts, President of the National Confederation of Trade Unions of Moldova, Oleg Buzda and OHS expert Elena Carchilan. In their opening speeches, they emphasized the importance of social dialogue and collective bargaining needed for better arrangement of OHS, both in Moldova and in other countries in the region.

The meeting had following sessions: Safety and health at the heart of future of work; challenges and opportunities; Presentations of the participating countries: current development and main challenges; OHS developments in EU – 30 years of OHS legislative framework in EU; Social dialogue in OHS; EU OSHA: Healthy Workplace Campaign – dangerous substances 2018-2019 ; Just transition for climate ambition; global architecture; Just Transition Center, Examples of how Just Transition Center can support unions, ILO Guidelines on just transition ; Just transition and trade union participation; role of social dialogue and PERC OHS Network – program and activities for 2020. It was mentioned that ambitious climate policies will not be possible without strong social measures to accompany them; the social dialogue should contribute to the assessment of the social and economic impact of climate change, especially regarding the impact on jobs. Also measures related to skills development and adequate social protection policies are important to deliver good climate policies. NIS trade unions are looking forward to start working on this so that they can create decent jobs that at the same time protect their climate and can limit the impact of global warming.