Promoting Freedom of Association and Social Dialogue in Myanmar With the introduction of the Labour Organisation Law (LOL) in March 2012, both employers and workers started with a low level of knowledge and awareness about trade unions (or ‘labour organisations’ as they are called in the LOL) and of the concepts of industrial relations and the ILO principles on which it is intended to be based. From June 2012 until the present, the ILO has engaged with employers, labour organisation leaders, and government officials, both separately and together. These dialogues have confirmed a need and a demand for a sustained and extensive education and training programme. The ILO is confident that this is progressively providing understanding, knowledge and skills, and will significantly contribute to the development of the new industrial relations system envisaged. The immediate focus is on assisting the new labour organisations at enterprise and factory level to effectively realize, in law and practice, the fundamental rights of freedom of association and social dialogue. However, these labour organizations do not operate in a vacuum. Therefore, a range of other types of training, technical assistance and policy advice are required. These include, inter alia, developing capacities of employers to understand the role of unions, to build positive workplace relations and to engage in productive negotiations; and to develop the conciliation and arbitration bodies so that they can assist workers and employers in building those relationships. The project will have a strong focus on gender equality and this is already being reflected in the efforts made to achieve (successfully) gender balance of participants in TOT training and the two-day basic bi-partite course. Recent ILO publications on Gender Equality, including “Gender Equality: A Guide to Collective Bargaining” and “Freedom of Association for Women Workers in EPZs” will be among the resource material used for this purpose. The implementation of the project will be led by a Chief Technical Adviser and an already existing team of five national staff; a Project Assistant, Administration Assistant, a translator and two educator-trainers, with advice from a tripartite consultative education and training group to be established. The intention is that, with the training for labour organisations in particular, as much of the training as possible will be undertaken in Myanmar language with a minimum of translation from English. This is already being achieved with the three day Training of Promoters Programme which is delivered monthly, and with the basic two day bi-partite (employers second day only) training programme which is being delivered weekly. This is working satisfactorily at this basic level with the local trainers (contracted in the case of the TOT and employed in the case of the Basic 2 day course) building their knowledge of the technical information through briefing papers prepared by the CTA and initial mentoring and resourcing by the CTA. The capacity of the programme to deliver an expanded programme will be developed by: • The employment of additional trainers. • The Training of Trainers programme. • Contracting and involving selected trainees from the TOT training, and from the broader pool of union and labour activists, as assistant trainers in the 2 day basic training.