The Employers' Consultative Association of T&T (ECATT) and the National Trade Union Centre of Trinidad and Tobago (NATUC), supported by the ILO Office for the Caribbean, will hold the first meeting of the T&T Bipartite Forum tomorrow at the Kapok Hotel in St Clair, to assess the state of the economy.
As well as representatives from ECATT, NATUC, ILO, CEC and CCL, the forum will host Jos� Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs in his first visit to T&T as Director of the ILO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, based in Lima, Peru.
The meeting follows an agreement last November 5 by the affiliates of the Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL) and the Caribbean Employers' Confederation (CEC) to establish formal bipartite forums in 15 Caribbean countries in order to deepen co-operation between trade unions and employers' organisations to better co-ordinate research and advocacy on matters of mutual importance.
The agreement was announced at the Regional Bipartite Meeting in Grenada attended by senior representatives from trade unions and employer organizations from 15 Cariforum States, under the �1.7 million (US$ 2 mllion) three-year Project for CEC and CCL which is funded by the European Union and for which the International Labour Organization (ILO) is the executing agency.