In 2003, Argentina became one the first countries to incorporate the concept of Decent Work to its national development agenda. Since then, a number of government programmes have put into practice different aspects of the Decent Work Agenda.
The Ministries of Labour and Education now organised a day for “Thinking about Decent Work in Schools”. More than 600 students from 15 secondary schools in the suburbs of Buenos Aires took part in the initiative, along with teachers, headmasters and teams from both ministries.
The premise was simple: participants had to think about the link between school and work and, more precisely, between school and the work that students want to do. The top national authorities for education and labour were there to listen to their ideas.
Furthermore, the project ‘Building a Future with Decent Work’, referred to by Labour Minister Tomada, was launched in 2004 by the national Ministries of Labour and Education and the ILO Country Office for Argentina. The achievements of this project include training 1000 teachers on the course ‘Explora Trabajo Decente’ (Explore Decent Work); offering all middle-school social sciences teachers in Argentina the opportunity to participate in the project Trabajarte, run by 21 teacher training centres; incorporating the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and the concept of Decent Work into the middle-school curriculum through a Resolution of the Federal Education Council; running a regional experience-sharing workshop, where the leaders and promoters of the project in the region countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay – discussed the direction that the programme had taken in each country.