ILO/Cinterfor announces the holding of the 47th Meeting of the Technical Committee (RCT) in Chile, in which more than 25 countries from Latin America and the Caribbean will participate, together with Spain, Portugal and Cape Verde.

In conjunction with the Chilean Ministry of Labour and Social Security, the Under-Secretariat of Labour and the services under this portfolio - Sence and ChileValora, as host institutions - the 47th RCT will focus on the theme: ‘Training for the future of work with social dialogue’.

The meeting, whose international context encompasses the changes that the world of work has undergone and will continue to undergo as a result of technological, demographic and climatic transitions, will address the importance of vocational training policies responding in a relevant and timely manner to the challenges that lie ahead. These responses should be built through a broad process of social dialogue.

During the launch of the event, the Minister of Labour and Social Security, Jeannette Jara, said: ‘We are very pleased that Chile is hosting this great event that invites us to discuss the challenges of vocational training. An example of this is the accelerated technological transition we are experiencing, which forces us to optimise our entire training and labour intermediation system, orienting it towards continuous training, with an emphasis on digital skills’.

The Secretary of State added: ‘Another challenge arises from the global climate crisis and the search for a just socio-ecological transition, where the productive sectors are resilient and people can retrain or, in the case of young people, find employment in emerging sectors, such as clean energy, where Chile has enormous potential that we are developing and that the Government of President Gabriel Boric has actively promoted’.

Social dialogue and lifelong learning

There is consensus in the labour field that vocational training, understood as a comprehensive concept encompassing both skills development and certification, has the capacity and opportunity to become one of the key active employment policies. This would enable workers, employers and governments to cope with transitions in the world of work, following the ILO tripartite approach.

In this line, the ILO/Cinterfor director, Elena Montobbio, said: ‘To realise the potential of vocational training policies, they must be designed, implemented and evaluated through social dialogue between representatives of the three aforementioned stakeholders, in order to ensure their relevance, quality, equity and sustainability over time’.

Lifelong learning and the role of vocational training in the new paradigm of the future of work will also be addressed at the 47th ILO/Cinterfor RCT.

This meeting will be an opportunity to exchange and examine, at regional level, the progress and challenges to make lifelong learning an effectively accessible right for all people.

Meeting of the Technical Commission

The ILO/Cinterfor Technical Committee Meeting is an important forum on vocational training which, every two years, brings together representatives of national agencies specializing in training and human resource development, as well as representatives of governments, employers‘ and workers’ organizations. The aim is to examine the challenges of vocational training in institutions, to exchange experiences and to make commitments for the development of new cooperative actions.

Overall, this meeting is an opportunity to reaffirm the central role of vocational training in national, regional and global agendas, identifying the solutions that policies in this field offer to the challenges of the future.

The Inter-American Centre for Knowledge Development in Vocational Training is a specialized body of the ILO, which articulates and coordinates the largest and most prestigious network of public and private entities and institutions dedicated to the strengthening of labour competencies. This network is made up of more than 55 entities from 27 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, Cape Verde and Portugal, and actively collaborates in the permanent updating of the knowledge management platform, which is available to the field of vocational training.