SIRAYE: A programme on Advancing Decent Work and inclusive industrialization in Ethiopia:

The Programme

With an initial focus on the garment and textile industries, the ILO in collaboration with tripartite partners has developed a comprehensive and coordinated programme to promote Decent Work and Inclusive Industrialization in Ethiopia.

The garment and textile industries are among the priorities of the Ethiopian Government under the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTPII) in the move of lifting Ethiopia to a middle-income country by 2025. According to the Plan of Action for Job Creation 2020- 2025, employment in the textiles and apparel industry is estimated at 798,752 in 2018 and is forecast to grow 86% through 2025, creating more that 683,000 new direct jobs and almost 868,000 new indirect jobs. However, poor working conditions and low wages resulting in low productivity, high turnover and absentee rates; as well as weak regulatory institutions, coupled with the limited capacity of the workers’ and employers’ organisations, hinder the proper functioning of the labour market and businesses environment.

The overarching development goal of the programme is to see improved respect of workers’ rights leading to greater incomes and compensation, enhanced safety, equality, voice, and representation. The programme also aims to lift industrial productivity and competitiveness to enable a global competitive textile and garment sector; and encourage accountable and transparent government institutions.

Programme Intervention

The programme works at national, regional and factory levels involving different ILO departments and global programmes to address the key challenges to advance decent work in Ethiopia.

At the national level, under the leadership of the tripartite partners, the programme facilitates dialogue among multiple stakeholders to develop a common vision and strategies to make Ethiopia an African hub of socially responsible production of garment for both global and domestic market. The programme also supports the tripartite constituents in fixing a minimum wage as well as enhance the capacity of government institutions to prevent and resolve labour disputes.

At the regional and sectoral level, the programme will focus on strengthening employers’ and workers’ organization capacity for social dialogue and collective barraging. It also assists the labour inspectorate in building the capacity of its inspectors. To ensure occupational health and safety, the programme aims to establish a sustainable work place injury prevention, protection and compensation system.

At the factory level, the Programme aims to establish a robust, sustainable and inclusive compliance system. It provides demand-driven capacity building support to improve factory productivity, working conditions and industrial relations. At the same time, the programme. This includes improving management systems, supervisory and human resources skills; and incorporates gender equality and diversity principles to encourage women workers to assume leadership positions.

Holistic Intervention

Advancing Decent Work and Inclusive Industrialization Programme brings not only the vast ILO experiences in different countries but also new way of delivering support in a holistic and coordinated manner. The programme brings together ILO’s key departments and global programmes such as Better Work, Vision Zero Fund, SCORE, LABADMIN/OSH and INWORK to promote sound industrial relations, strengthen enterprise level practices, improve factory productivity, build labour inspectorate capacity, and ulti¬mately, provide a blueprint for the rollout of decent work practices into other industries.

Service Model

The programme service model is based on assuring continuous improvement with in factories to benefit the workers, factory and the industry at large. The learnings from the factory level will be used to inform interventions and policy dialogue at sectoral and national levels

SIRAYE’s service delivery method coordinates key ILO departments and global programmes to deliver service on the following;

Better Work: SIRAYE works very closely with government, enterprises, workers, and brands through a robust, sustainable and inclusive compliance assessment and remediation system. In addition, the programme provides demand driven trainings targeting workers, managers and other stakeholders to improve compliance with ILO core labour standards and national legislations, working conditions, win-win social dialogue and, at the same time enhance factories’ productivity and profitability.
Better work - a collaborative and comprehensive programme between the ILO and the International Finance Cooperation (IFC).

Enhance productivity: with a focus on improving factory level productivity, SIRAYE’s programme service package rolls ILO’s Sustaining Competitive and Responsible Enterprises (SCORE) modular training and in factory coaching related to quality management, efficient use of resources and industrial engineering concepts of productivity improvement. The training and advisory services also reinforces concepts of workplace cooperation needed to improve productivity by focusing on building trust, respect and communication between managers and workers; and setting performance improvement teams.

Occupational safety and health (OSH): with the aim of preventing work-related death, injuries and diseases, SIRAYE’s programme service package works on creating enabling environment for the promotion of safe and healthy working conditions. The programme works closely with key stakeholders to improve legal and policy frameworks that promote and enforce OSH; as well as to ensure workers are covered by a sustainable prevention, protection and compensation system.

Occupational safety and health (OSH): with the aim of preventing work-related death, injuries and diseases, SIRAYE’s programme service package works on creating enabling environment for the promotion of safe and healthy working conditions. The programme works closely with key stakeholders to improve legal and policy frameworks that promote and enforce OSH; as well as to ensure workers are covered by a sustainable prevention, protection and compensation system. The Vision Zero Fund (VZF), an initiative of the Group of Seven (G7) countries with the aim at preventing work-related deaths, injuries and diseases in the global supply chain supports the implementation of this service.

Labour Administration and Inspection: As part of SIRAYE’s service package, ILO supports the strengthening of labour administration in building more effective labour inspection systems. In doing so, ILO aims to enhance capacity of the labour inspectorate in strategic compliance planning and implementation. As part of this, training curriculum and labour inspection information and knowledge management system will be designed and applied.

ILO’s Labour Inspection, Labour Administration and OSH (LABADMIN/OSH) branch supports the programme by drawing expertise and experience from various countries.

Improved Industrial Relation and Minimum Wage: The programme aims to promote sound industrial relations, working conditions and strengthen organizations’ capacity for dialogue and collective barraging at enterprise, sectoral and national level. In addition, it will assist the Government and Social Partners with the development of minimum wage setting mechanisms and necessary capacity to set and adjust minimum wages in a sustainable manner. Further work will be done to build the capacity of Government Institutions to prevent and resolve labour disputes.

ILO’s Inclusive Labour Markets, Labour Relations and Working Conditions Branch (INWORK) will provide technical assistance to achieve this objective.