Guy Ry­der, Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al of the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ILO) will vis­it T&T next month. A me­dia ad­vi­so­ry from the Port-of-Spain-based ILO Of­fice for the Caribbean said Ry­der will at­tend the 8th ILO Meet­ing of Caribbean Labour Min­is­ters to be held from Ju­ly 2-3 at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and To­ba­go.The theme of the two-day meet­ing is The Caribbean and Labour 2013 and Be­yond - Strength­en­ing De­cent Work for De­vel­op­ment and is be­ing or­gan­ised by the ILO in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the T&T gov­ern­ment.Ry­der will ad­dress the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the meet­ing, along with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Min­is­ter of Labour and Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Er­rol McLeod and Cari­com Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ir­win La Rocque.

The ILO As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al and Re­gion­al Di­rec­tor for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (LAC) Eliz­a­beth Tinoco, will al­so at­tend the meet­ing.While in T&T, Ry­der is ex­pect­ed to at­tend a break­fast meet­ing of the tri­par­tite part­ners from the Caribbean Em­ploy­ers' Con­fed­er­a­tion (CEC), the Caribbean Con­gress of Labour (CCL), and Min­is­ters of Labour of the Caribbean.The ILO meet­ing will pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for del­e­gates to take a po­si­tion on crit­i­cal is­sues re­lat­ed to em­ploy­ment and labour in the re­gion.Dis­cus­sions will cov­er de­cent work for de­vel­op­ment; ILO's strat­e­gy for the adop­tion of full and pro­duc­tive em­ploy­ment and de­cent work as an ex­plic­it goal of the glob­al De­vel­op­ment agen­da be­yond 2015; and labour mi­gra­tion, labour mar­ket in­for­ma­tion sys­tem, and pol­i­cy co­her­ence.

In May 2012, the ILO elect­ed Ry­der as its tenth Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al. He pre­vi­ous­ly served as the ILO's Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor for In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Stan­dards and Fun­da­men­tal Prin­ci­ples and Rights at Work and was elect­ed by se­cret bal­lot by the ILO's Gov­ern­ing Body. He be­gan his five-year term last Oc­to­ber.Ry­der has some 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the world of work, most of it at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. Born in Liv­er­pool in the Unit­ed King­dom in 1956, he was ed­u­cat­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Cam­bridge and Liv­er­pool and start­ed his ca­reer at the In­ter­na­tion­al De­part­ment of the Trade Union Con­gress in Lon­don. In 1985, Ry­der moved to Gene­va, to take up the po­si­tion of Sec­re­tary of the In­dus­try Trade Sec­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Com­mer­cial, Cler­i­cal, Pro­fes­sion­al and Tech­ni­cal Em­ploy­ees (FI­ET).

In 1988, he be­came As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor and from 1993 served as Di­rec­tor of the Gene­va Of­fice of the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fed­er­a­tion of Free Trade Unions.Ry­der joined the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Of­fice (ILO) as Di­rec­tor of the Bu­reau for Work­ers' Ac­tiv­i­ties, in 1998 and in 1999 he be­came Di­rec­tor of the Of­fice of the ILO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al.As the ILO's Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor re­spon­si­ble for In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Stan­dards and Fun­da­men­tal Prin­ci­ples and Rights at Work, Ry­der was in­volved in over­see­ing key work in the su­per­vi­sion of the Ap­pli­ca­tion of ILO Con­ven­tions and Rec­om­men­da­tions. He led sev­er­al high lev­el mis­sions to ad­dress a range of stan­dards-re­lat­ed ques­tions in coun­tries such as Bahrain, Colom­bia, Fi­ji, Geor­gia, Greece, Myan­mar and Swazi­land.Ry­der was al­so re­spon­si­ble for the suc­cess­ful ref­or­ma­tion of the ILO Gov­ern­ing Body, which came in­to ef­fect in No­vem­ber 2011.