The Labour Market Task Group

The Labour Market Task Group is a thematic committee of the Cyprus Dialogue Forum. It is a dialogue among mandated representatives from Trade Unions, Business and Professional Associations, Political Parties and NGOs from the two communities on issues relating to the labour market.

In the context of the dialogue, stakeholders recognise that the viability of a peace agreement is based not only on the development of the legal and political governance frameworks but also on the preparation and planning of an implementation process aimed at improving economic and social cohesion between the two communities in view to enable a vibrant and healthy labour market to function. While labour related issues are in part addressed in the formal negotiation process, these are relatively limited and there is lack of information on these matters as it is not a transparent process. Thus, a major concern of the stakeholders is that a concrete and viable process for labour market integration and implementation is not currently within the agenda of the formal process.

Within this context, the Labour Market Task Group works towards establishing a shared vision that serves the prospect of integrating the labour market as well as creating options for addressing problems and challenges in the process. For this reason, the stakeholders in the Labour Market Task Group work to design roadmaps of change, generate options to address the challenges to labour market integration, based on shared visions, values & common understanding among stakeholders. The efforts of the Task Group do not aim to replace the formal process but to act in a complementary manner to contribute and support the efforts to reach a solution to the Cyprus problem.