“New level” was the theme for the annual union week organised at the end of October by the Marine Transport Workers' Trade Union of Ukraine (MTWTU). Ukraine occupies the fourth position in the world for countries supplying maritime labour. The union has 75,000 members, including 45,000 Ukrainian seafarers.
This is the third year that the MTWTU has organised a union week, with the support of ITF, to keep Ukrainian seafarers aware of the global union movement and its role in protecting seafarers’ rights. More than 150 Ukrainian seafarers attended three days of seminars about the union movement in Ukraine, the work of MTWTU and the ITF, seafarers’ labour rights protection and many other aspects of working at sea.
The seminars included presentations from MTWTU first vice-chair Oleg Grygoriuk about the activities of the MTWTU, and Jaanus Kuiv, ITF inspector in Estonia. Nataliya Yefrimenko, ITF inspector in Ukraine, gave a talk on the basic conditions and structure of the ILO Maritime Labour Convention 2006 (MLC), which sets global minimum standards for seafarers’ working and living conditions. Participants also got the opportunity for training through a virtual reality simulator.
The MTWTU says that more than a thousand people have participated in the union weeks since they began.
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